dream of the lotus in bloom
by Pulpo Fiction
Summary: Fourteen years ago, a masked man intercepts a letter to the White Lotus, breaks into the home of a young Water Tribe couple, and leaves with their only daughter. Now, she is seventeen, a youth in the spring of awakening. An Equalist!Korra AU. p.s. now with sad, angsty Makorra! / Chapter 9: Escalation, Escape *STILL UPDATING*
1. Prologue

A/N: and here we go.

* * *

**[Prologue]**

_Fourteen years ago_

Her husband is still and limp on the floor, one hand out, open in supplication. The man is at her throat now – his gloved fingers clawed into the soft flesh under her jaw – he pins her to the wall and Senna feels cold all over, like her blood is turning to stone – she can't move –

"Where is your daughter?" asks the man, voice cool and rich through the mask, like snow on her neck.

"We don't – have a daughter," Senna gasps, and her muscles are dragging on her body, her bones are going to break through her skin if she tries to fight him –

"Liar," he says, and just past the black stars bursting in her eyes he snaps something open with a flourish. It's Tonraq's letter to the White Lotus. Why he has it, she doesn't know, but each one of those words cuts now, each stroke carved on her soul with a knifepoint: _we have reason to believe that our daughter may be the Avatar…_

"This _is_ about your daughter, isn't it?" the man says, his grip loosening slightly, and she shakes her head, clenching her teeth in a silent snarl. He drops her suddenly and she collapses to the floor, sucking in huge mouthfuls of air, she braces herself to dive for the jugs of water or the spears or _anything_ and fight – but he twists his hand through the air and her own body clamps sharply around her spine. There is no sound in her shriek, just a high blank note of dread ringing in her mind as she tumbles roughly through the curtain and finds herself face to face with her sleeping child.

Korra.

"Wake her up," says the man, his masked face rising like a cold moon over her daughter's bed. Senna kneels by the bed and stares at him, her breath snagging in her ribs; she's not going to give him anything_._

"No," she chokes; her rage is dry and sour in her mouth. The man hesitates, his hand tensing over her; but he swoops onto Korra and shakes her – how dare he touch her –

"Get away from my d – " but he shoves the words back down her throat with a wave of his closed fist, nails her to the floor with his lightless gaze. Every breath tears and aches but she is long past the point of simple fear. She just wants to make him hurt –

Korra stirs, mumbles, and sits up, her toddler belly curving out under her nightdress; she rubs her eyes with the back of her hand, still round and padded with baby fat.

"Mhmma?" she murmurs, at the sight of her mother's stricken face.

"Make her firebend," whispers the man, "_now_."

He flings his hand towards the other room and there is a horrible wet splintering noise as he wrenches an unintelligible syllable of agony from her husband's mouth. Senna looks into Korra's bleary eyes and strokes her face, her downy brown hair, her fingers trembling. She's so beautiful.

"Korra? Can you firebend for me? Firebend for mommy," she breathes, cupping her cheek, shaking uncontrollably. Korra moans in a low undertone and tries to flop back onto her pillow, but Senna peels enough strength from her aching body to steady her as the man forces another gurgling sob from Tonraq.

"Korra – "

_Don't do it. Don't do it. I know you love it so much, the way you can pull heat off the midnight sun, hold fistfuls of sparks, the flicker on your face, the burning of your soul into godhood – but don't do it don't do it don't firebend please_

Korra shows her hand to her mother, a glowing blossom of white and yellow hovering an inch over the lines of her palm. It flashes over her eyes as she waits for Senna's_ what a pretty fire, let's show Daddy _and in the other room, Tonraq stops twitching.

"That's my girl," Senna says quietly, her heart flooding with despair.

The flame goes out with a weak cry as the man lifts Korra from her bed, blanket and all, cradling her to his chest with one arm and Senna lunges for her but it's not enough – Korra's bare foot slips through her grasp, she can feel each warm toe sliding past her fingers, and the man looms over Senna as Korra starts to fuss and whine. She has never hated anyone so much in her life – she just needs one hand to kill him – break his neck – pulverize his organs with a squelch – she can't move and he yanks on the air, a hard backward thrust like tightening a knot. Senna feels it in her head and as she falls into a soft, dizzying blackness, she sees Korra's sleepy, irritated pout, lower lip quivering; her hair shrubby and wild, her tiny hand slapping clumsily at the mask: _I - don't - want – up mmaahhh_

_Good girl_, thinks Senna, _fight him _

and she clings to this, her one last hope.

* * *

A/N: chp. 1 will be up in a few days; chp 2. within two weeks. enjoy. reviews always appreciated, + you can find updates and general fandom foolery on my tumblr (pulpofiction tumblr)


	2. The Mask, The Prisoner, The Rally

**a/n: **a very grateful 'thank you' to everyone who followed, favorited and reviewed! Enjoy.

And it's Noatak withOUT the mask on, Amon WITH the mask on.  
Trigger warning for a hard slap.

* * *

**[Chapter 1]**

_I. The Mask_

Each family has different habits, and theirs is this: She scars her father's face before every meeting.

He sits on the kitchen counter, black hair slicked back, grey beach-glass eyes closed placidly; Korra stands with her fingertips covered in molding wax and smears it onto his face – first, on the corner of his mouth, make it bumpy and rough, thumb it into a sneer; then the eyebrows, make them disappear. Then she pops the tops off the powders, inhales their chalky damp smell, and drags visceral pinks and reds from his temple to his jaw with a practiced hand.

She thinks she's probably the only seventeen-year-old girl who puts more make-up on her father than on herself.

Noatak can't talk a lot while Korra's doing it, because otherwise the make-up gets ruined, but she talks to him, dropping short ideas into the silence between them, like pebbles into a pond – _Dad, the new recruits are catching on fast to chi-blocking, and I finally cleaned my uniform_ _– _and he just listens, hums notes of approval from deep within his chest. By this point he's already wearing the gauntlets and double-breasted coat, with the hood slung back, and he looks bigger than normal, swollen with charisma and power. And of course she leaves some things out, like breaking bricks on the roof with her feet, and reducing newspapers to ash from ten yards away. He wouldn't like that.

The setting sun paints the kitchen walls in shallow afternoon sunlight, in thick swaths of dusky pale yellow; he is outlined by the sun behind him in thin gold lines. Korra washes the powders off her hands and into the basin, the colors running together in dusty trickles, and he slides off the counter and checks his newly scarred face in the mirror on the wall.

"Excellent," he says, his voice carrying the hard clear tap of a bell, and she thinks that maybe today, maybe…

Noatak leans against the counter, notepad in hand, crossing things out and re-writing. Tonight's speech has to be perfect, she knows this, but everything else is ready to go and if he's in a good mood already… she sidles next to him, reading over his shoulder, the short, scratchy strokes of the pen itching away at her mind. Little ink gnats she wants to splat to the wall. Korra follows his assertive scrawl across the page, and her breath hitches on a phrase near the beginning. He wrote about Mom. Actually, today might be a bad day to ask.

"Is there something you want?" he says, pausing his scribbling; she can't read his face because of her own handiwork.

"Um… Do you have a copy of my lines? I wanna go over them," she asks pertly, because it's a question he'll like.

"You should have them memorized already," Noatak says shortly.

"Dad, I just want to double-check," she says, and he wordlessly rips a sheet off the notepad and holds it out between two fingers. Korra already knows what it says. Those ideas have been tattooed into her mind for a long time, and she knows them better than her own name: _bending is an abomination, bending is oppressive, my mother was only one among thousands who have suffered at the hands of benders… rid the world of benders and we will finally be free._

She believes it, she really does, she has lived and breathed this all her life. But the speeches still make her stomach cave in, the words creeping over her skin like insects. Korra has never asked what her father thought of his only daughter being a bender – and of three elements, no less; no one's ever even _heard_ of something like that before. And what does he think of himself? Sometimes she understands, because of Mom; and sometimes she doesn't. The page blurs out of focus before her eyes.

Noatak puts the notepad aside and crosses his arms, musing at his feet, thinking –

"Now, Korra, tell me what it is you actually want," he says, startling her. His command is inflected with a ringing coolness, struck through with an impatient ire. He can't stand it when she lies.

Korra hesitates, words rising to the top of her throat; each passing second of silence will chip away at his patience. But she wants it. In spite of everything she lives in, she wants it so badly it aches – she feels it when she rolls a quivering sphere of water in the air between her hands, when she freezes the rain so that it shatters on the street, when she pulls loops of water out of the rooftop rain gutter and they shimmer as they twist. It feels like - like nostalgia for a good dream, the kind whose movements settle on you in the morning and you seal them in with a regret and a sigh.

_Teach me how to waterbend._

She can't say it. She feels guilty. She wants something that is _wrong_.

"It can wait."

"Fine. Go dress yourself. We're leaving as soon as the sun goes down."

Korra slips into her room, where the uniform is hanging from a hook on the wall. It looks like Dad's, all grimly maroon and double-breasted, but it curves recklessly over her hips and squares off her muscled shoulders. She straps the gauntlets to her wrists and makes a fist, feeling a surge of anger as the leather groans and creaks, and then she bares her teeth as she paints around her eyes with kohl, unfurling great wings of black. It's bitter work, putting on a different face, a different body, and a different name, but as she finishes, she relaxes. Her doubts whittle away the more she whittles away at the girl who is Korra, stripping things off, remolding, rebuilding.

Korra slides the blue wraps off her wolf tails and shakes out her hair. It bursts from her head in lively chestnut waves and she brushes it back with her fingers, tying a deft knot on the back of her head. She turns in front of her mirror, checking - she has a streamlined severity this way, and it makes her more intimidating, almost wraith-like. Korra is always surprised that she likes it. It makes her blood crackle with energy and rage, her spine harden with arrogance. She would laugh at the girl who wanted to waterbend, too weak for scruples and trapped in her own fears. _This_ girl is unbreakable. She is limitless.

Korra is almost done, but there is one last thing, in the black suede bag tucked into the back of a dresser drawer. The _other_ Korra avoids it, and buries it away where it can't find her. _She_ loves it, and guards it like treasure. Korra tilts the bag over her open hand, catches the half-mask, and covers her face, sweeping across the curves with both palms and knotting the ribbons together. She flips the hood over her head and she's finished.

She strides into the living room as a fiery dusk flares across the sky, and her father is Amon now, standing by the window, hands clasped behind his back. He has his mask on – the mask carved from a glacier, implacable and serene and relentlessly still; the fixed smile is predatory, infinitely patient. The last rays of sunlight catch his eyes and they gleam like the ocean at noon.

"You look marvelous," he says, voice proud and resonant behind the mask, and her breath catches. No matter how often Korra hears it, no matter how often she sees the transformation, Amon makes her nerves bristle, makes a cold thrill of power shiver through her.

"I know," she says, smiling; the lines of her half-mask are drawn with the concentrated essence of a bird of prey, uncompromising sleekness and ruthless fury. They are interrupted only by a blue lotus blossom, frozen to the center of the whiteness on her forehead.

The mask cages the last bit of herself under its cool ceramic touch, under denial, denial, denial – _this_ is what she wants, _this_ is who she is –

Korra is gone. There is only Tenchu. Amon and Tenchu.

Korra hates Tenchu.

_II. The Prisoner_

They leap and tumble across the rooftops of the city, diving from fire escapes to empty balconies, moving noiselessly. By the time they reach the warehouse by the docks there are drumbeats pounding in her blood and she pants for air, feeling her lungs and throat dry and hollow out. From their spot on the warehouse roof, the entire city sprawls before them, restless and groaning; a leviathan scaled in square lights, turning fitfully through a grimy asphalt dream. Over the mountains, the moon is plump and full.

Korra makes for the ladder but Amon grabs the back of her uniform and pulls her up short, turning her around by the shoulders to face him. She huffs and lifts her arms, lets him fix her up. He always has to do this, always has to arrange and rearrange into neurotic perfection, but they wouldn't have made it this far without that kind of compulsion. He flattens the wrinkles, tugs on the hem of the coat, and crouches to straighten her shin guards. She feels like a doll.

She rolls her eyes towards the harbor, skimming over the horizon, rounding Air Temple Island, drawing dashes between the boats out on the sea… and she stops at the statue of the Avatar. Korra stares at it, stares him down; scowls at his calm copper-green face, the arrow, the mouth on the tip of smiling. She feels its blank stone gaze push back…. looking at her, looking into her… she's rising, like someone is trying to lift her from the ground by her senses –

She breaks the quiet with a gasp and jerks her head around.

"What's wrong?"

There's no one else on the rooftop, no one at all.

"Dad…" she starts, as Amon flaps her hood into artistic looseness with two hands. He doesn't say anything. He just waits for her to finish the thought.

_I don't want to be here. I don't want to be a part of this._

"…never mind."

"That is the second time tonight you've chosen not to answer me," he says, taking a step back, his mask tilting to her feet and then up to her face. She's passed muster.

"I know. I'm sorry," she mumbles, the words barely passing between her lips, and he snorts.

"Your hesitation does not amuse me in the slightest, Korra, and I would advise you to resolve it before the rally begins," he growls, and a sticky, greasy knot drops down her throat. She can't – she _can't _–disappoint him, she just can't… Over his shoulder, the Avatar statue watches her.

"Yes, Dad. I will," she says.

"_Good_," he says, snapping the word off an unspoken threat,and Korra takes it from him, all the things she wants to say tangled up in silence and confusion. He sighs heavily, rubs his wrists, and casts a glance towards the ladder over the ledge. He's reading something far away, written on the skyline with the soft glow of streetlights. Abruptly he brushes his hood back, lifts his mask, and does the same to her, forcing her face into the curve of his hand, his palm warm and dry.

"Korra, look at me," he orders, searching for her eyes, "Korra."

She does.

"It's fine to be nervous," he says. She gives him a miserable, half-hearted little nod, _yes, Dad_ – and he hugs her, pressing her head to his chest, arms wrapping around her. Her father is always somewhere underneath the calculating combat activist, always... She closes her eyes, wanting to just sink into the solid warmth of his broad chest, the closeness and the _thun-thun_ of his heart beating through the uniform, the way he rests his head on hers and tightens his embrace until her ribs hurt, he holds onto her so well. Korra lives an airless eternity until he finally lets go and holds her out, both hands on her shoulders, smiling. Everything is fine, it's okay, she's forgiven, and her soul is brimming with a calm, flowing joy.

He pulls her in again, briefly touches his lips to her forehead. Then he covers up the kiss with her mask, tugging it bluntly back into place. She follows him down the ladder to the platform and then onto the catwalk over the warehouse floor. They walk into a sudden silence as the sparse crowd of men and women on the floor, in their sleek Equalist uniforms and gleaming insectoid cowls, pause their preparations to look up at Amon and Tenchu, their leaders.

"The revelation is at hand, brothers and sisters," he booms, and they are both greeted with a heady rush of cheers. There is an expectant rustle, a nervously happy ripple of murmurs; they want him to talk to them, to speak to them, to cast them words of encouragement from his place on high. Korra waves at their cowled faces and grins when some of them laugh and wave back.

Her spirits lifted on the weight of his affection and they soar even higher on the Equalists' enthusiasm. They love her, they adore her; Tenchu is their hope, their instrument of freedom, their revolution blossoming inside a dream child. But he took off her mask and hugged Korra.

"Carry on. Our real work will begin in earnest soon enough," Amon says, and he offers his arm to Korra as they tramp down the staircase, metal clanging with each hit of their boots.

They are met at the bottom by the Lieutenant, lean and wiry, a man returned to seed by his mission, his every movement wrapped in unhesitating devotion. His goggles are pushed to the top of his head and he bows to them, stiff and efficient. He never shows much interest in Korra, beyond being her father's daughter; in his presence she has to stifle the urge to cling to Amon, drag him away to somewhere else. Amon is never her father when the Lieutenant is around.

"Amon, Tenchu," the Lieutenant says, in his dry dusty gravel of a voice.

"A report is in order, Lieutenant," says Amon, as they walk across the empty warehouse floor. The switch is almost always imperceptible but she feels it now, like an eyelash on her skin; from here on out, he will be only Amon. Korra finds herself squeezed out from between them and makes a face at their backs, letting the distance grow. She bites her lip, tasting the air for the atmosphere in the dimly lit, cavernous warehouse. There is a lively tension. Everyone seems to be on the same kind of edge, breathless and eager.

"Everything is prepared and ready for tonight," says the Lieutenant, "and I received word from Sato that the gloves are in final production stages as of two days ago. We should be ready to distribute them in the coming month."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Amon says, and Korra unthreads his tone and finds the same color in his earlier approval of the scar make-up. She turns her head away from them, frowning, and stops to watch as the enormous banner of Amon is unfurled from the rafters, billowing open over the stage with a heavy snap.

"You'll be pleased to know the task force was very successful in providing for tonight's demonstration," the Lieutenant continues, and they round the right side of the stage and slip through a side door into a small, damp machine room.

"So I see," Amon says, voice raw with anticipation, and as she looks around the room, an icy shiver slides up the valley of Korra's spine, curling around her neck and scalp.

There are prisoners. Five of them, all men, kneeling on the ground, arms and wrists bound behind their backs and gagged with strips of white cloth. They're not making much noise; just snuffling on the gags, faces red and blotchy. Korra's gaze flicks to the massive Equalist man standing at attention near the doorway, and then back to the men. She swallows her tongue and stiffens because they don't scare her, they _don't._

Amon walks down the row with deliberate slowness, studying each one, and the air in the room turns thick. He leans down and grabs a man's face, the mask inches away from the man's stifled grimace. The man is older and well dressed in red and gold, with bushy salt-and-pepper side burns and narrow, belligerent eyes.

"Well met, Lightning Bolt Zolt," he drawls, and Zolt responds with a contemptuous _haughgh_ through the gag. Amon shoves his face away and steps back to scrutinize the row, arms crossed, thinking to himself.

"Zolt first, naturally," he says suddenly, throwing two fingers at Zolt, and then he points out each man in turn as he continues: "then the one in orange and the one in blue. Tenchu takes the two benders in green, that one and then the younger one, after I've finished with the other three. If one of them breaks down, skip him and give us the next."

"Yes, sir," responds the large Equalist, with a sharp bow of the head. Out the door, someone calls for the Lieutenant, and he leaves the room, only to poke his head back in after a second with a hasty "Amon, sir! You, too, Jin!"

Amon and the Equalist stride out of the room without a backwards glance and Korra is left standing there alone, eyes roving over the bound men, her heart emptying and then emptying again and then emptying one more time and damnit, she's _hesitating_.

She didn't want the younger one. He's at the end of the row, sort of detached from everyone else, several feet away; he might've squirmed away from the rest. He looks around her age, or maybe just a touch below, round-faced with wet, shimmering green eyes and a black cowlick all lifeless and limp. He barely looked up when Amon passed him over, sitting hunched over himself. Couldn't even flinch. There was just numb, painless fear. Korra makes a scathing noise and scuffs a foot on the floor, sketching a wide half-circle in front of her. _Benders are evil_.

She saunters over and cocks her hips, folding her arms in a casually threatening imitation of Amon. When he doesn't look up, she taps him in the knee with a light kick-swing of her foot and he startles, eyes widening with a questioning whimper.

Korra rolls the gag down his chin, cloth pressing into his round cheeks, and then off his face completely. He twists to wipe his mouth, slick and shiny with drool, on his shoulder, rolling his tongue on the aftertaste of the gag.

"What's your name?"

"I think there's been a mistake," he splutters, and his voice is young and earnest. Korra sniffs and closes her eyes for a second, just for a moment.

"You're a bender, aren't you?" she asks, mouth tightening around the word _bender_, wringing its syllables dry with disdain.

"Yeah, but – "

"Then there's no mistake," Korra says swiftly.

" – but I didn't do anything _wrong_," he says desperately, "I don't know why I'm here! I just got kidnapped by you crazy Equalist guys and now _you're_ gonna do something to me, I don't even know what you're gonna do but I can already tell it's not gonna be fun – "

She presses her fingers to his mouth and he pulls his head back, crossing his eyes at her hand.

"I asked you for your _name_," Korra says, "not your whining."

He glares at her, thick eyebrows furrowing over his snub of a nose, and Korra doesn't like it, he's making her feel bad.

"Bolin," he says finally, "and you're Tenchu. I've heard of you. You're a bully."

Korra blinks, tucking the last comment away to a place she can't hear it, and finds a smirk somewhere in herself. She thinks of her father, and his precise, rich way of nailing people, hammering them down with just a few light taps of a phrase.

"What do you bend, Bolin?"

She can't do it. She sounds stupid trying to drawl, or whatever, but she keeps the smirk.

"I'm an earthbender," Bolin says proudly, back straightening, chest lifting, "and I'm not bad."

Korra wonders who told him he could be proud of his bending, who told him he could look at her like that from under his brows, like he's not ashamed of being _bender scum_. Who allowed him to think that way?

"What's it like?" she says, in the tone of an afterthought, and Bolin gapes at her. His shoulders slouch.

"Uh… I guess it's… it's amazing," he says in a slow voice, face turned up to her. "You feel like… like you're made out of rocks."

"… 'made out of rocks,'" Korra repeats, and she's kind of disappointed.

"Yeah, made out of rocks. Like you're part of the earth and the earth is part of you, like you're not just kicking stuff out of the ground, or punching boulders or anything, but you're just… moving energy around. Like if I bend a wall out of a mountain I'm not… like… ruining the earth," Bolin says, "because I _am_ the earth. I'm the whole earth, just walking around."

He trembles a bit, coming back to where he is, tied up on the floor, and his gaze drops crestfallen to her boots. But yeah, he was right, it was something like that… it _was_ like you were the earth, what with its steady beating hum of _chi_ rising through your bare feet, vibrating into your bones, rooting you into the ground, filling you with an enduring, persistent agelessness…

"That's pretty neat," she says lamely, because she doesn't know what else to say.

"'Neat'? You're an E-equalist and you think earthbending is 'pretty neat'? No offense, but doesn't that, uh… make you a pretty b-bad Equalist?" Bolin asks, looking up again, voice shaking; he's being fresh with her, how desperately brave. Korra unsettles, feeling all of her insides tilted the wrong way, and she makes a face.

"No, _you're_ a bad Equalist," she snipes, and he makes a weird noise that splutters as he tries to hold it in, but it comes out anyway, all choked and helpless. His expression is torn in two: fear, and… and he's trying not to laugh.

"Yes! Yes, clearly, I'm a bad Equalist," Bolin says, ropes straining against the movement of his shaky, faltering laughter, "but maybe, if you untied me, you could show me how to be a _good_ Equalist…?"

"No can do," says Korra firmly, shaking her head; but she likes Bolin, him and his odd, plucky touch of daring, talking to her like he's not her enemy but her friend, and he looks at her kind of funny for half a second.

"…you have a really nice smile."

"What?"

"Your smile. It's pretty," he mumbles, ducking his head. And she didn't even notice she was smiling, but now she feels it grow, spread wide and warm over her face. And he smiles at her, a shy, crooked quirk of the lips, teeth barely showing. She vaguely remembers that she's supposed to be intimidating him, but he's nice and doesn't seem bad at all…

Bolin's shoulders hunch up to his ears, color draining from his face – wait, she didn't do anything for him to look so terrified – and Amon reaches out and tugs the gag roughly into Bolin's mouth.

"Tenchu," he says without looking at her, keeping his eyes fixed on Bolin, who looks faint, "come with me."

He leads her to a deserted hallway and, without warning, steers Korra into the wall, one hand on her collarbone, the back of her head going _crack_ against the cement. Her foot slips out from under her and she braces herself, a hot, sickly bitterness welling up from the bottom of her gut, as he paces a short distance away. He turns on his heel and tilts her mask up her face, carelessly, brutally. Her tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth and she can hear him fuming.

"I didn't want to do this, but you leave me no choice," he says, and there is a swelling silence –

He backhands her, a stinging slap that cuts across her face and lands hard enough to loosen her hair and knock the mask askew; his nails rake across her cheek like knives. If she clenches her jaw any tighter it will crack and break, so she straightens her stance, lifts her head, and stares at the wall in front of her. There is nothing to say.

"Korra, you're a disgrace," he snarls, and she loses a breath and sucks it back up, she's not going to cry. He paces a tight line around her and she stares at the wall, so hard that it becomes a vast expanse of beige, a great stretch of nothing. She is the wall.

"Far be it from me to doubt what you told me earlier, that there's nothing wrong with you. But, I'm beginning to suspect otherwise," Amon says smoothly, leaning in closely, his words hot on her face, and she fights back the impulse to duck or shield herself – no resisting, just wait, be a wall – "and unless you can convince me of your convictions, _now_, you will make me _very_ angry."

"There's nothing wrong with me," Korra blurts, taking her eyes off the wall, and she clamps her mouth shut as his eyes narrow.

"Your reassurances are meaningless," Amon says, "until you prove them with your actions. Do not disappoint me, Korra, by hesitating when the time comes. Do what needs to be done."

There is a long pause.

"Say it!"

"I won't hesitate!"

"As expected," he says brusquely, and leaves her there without another word. He disappears onto the warehouse floor and Korra takes a moment, lets everything go slack, chest heaving; she rubs her cheek where it still smarts and feels hotness pool around her eyes. She's not going to cry. She's not going to cry. She presses the back of her wrist to her eyes and digs her teeth into her lower lip, she's not going to cry…

Korra takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it go with a _whuff_. She readjusts her mask and marches back to the warehouse floor, ignoring Bolin as she passes through the machine room, and she makes a beeline to where her father is standing with the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant glances at her and then to Amon, a small smirk twitching on his mouth. He's ferreting out their moods.

"Are you ready?" the Lieutenant asks, twirling a kali stick in his hand, it buzzes as it spins a blurred circle through the air. He's caught a whiff of humiliation, son of a bitch, he loves the stench.

"Of course," she says dismissively.

"You shouldn't be so difficult," the Lieutenant sneers, "your father is a great man."

Since when does the Lieutenant scold her? Korra wants to smash his goggles into his face but she rolls her shoulders back, lifting her chin.

"He can't finish a newspaper sudoku to save his life," she says, returning the sneer in kind. She can't help herself, she has her own weapons; she's emboldened against his petty needling.

"Your father will lead us to equality and freedom," the Lieutenant says sagely.

"He's a terrible singer, can't even get the words to 'Secret Tunnel' right," Korra says, matching his tone, her voice louder than his. She doesn't care about the Lieutenant. All she can think about is her father making eggs in the morning, singing in his lush baritone, and how good it sounds.

"Without him, non-benders wouldn't have a chance in this city!"

"Yeah, and his imitation of Councilman Tarrlok is the funniest, dumbest thing in the world – " and he wakes her up with a bouquet of lotuses on her birthday, still carries her to bed when she falls asleep during the radio music hour, never forgets how she likes her oolong tea – but he thinks she's a disgrace –

"And you're a bad-tempered brat, and if you were my daughter – "

"But she is not, so that is _enough_," Amon says, in a voice frozen over, and they both stop. He meets her eyes, holding them for a long, infinite flash of a second, and looks away.

_III. The Rally_

Finally, at last, they're on stage, the world falling into place before her, the crowd of faces bright and clear and waiting and everyone is here except her because she is outside of herself, bracing her soul for what comes next _what must be done_. The crowd reacts flawlessly to Amon's every play on their emotions, their feelings are like clay in his hands _the_ _firebender took a mother from my daughter and then he took my face I've been forced to hide behind this mask_ _ever since_

But their pity is meaningless because Korra is Tenchu and she is made of steel forged from rage and vengeance and she remembers her mother, nothing but a face caught behind a snarling knot of flames, and it's fire that cooled her father so much, she can't forgive it, she will never forgive that fire because _the only thing that bending has brought to the world is suffering _and Korra is lost somewhere, plunged in deep under the curves of the Tenchu lotus mask, Tenchu who would rid the world of benders, unyielding and sure.

And the revelation, the revelation is the solution _what is the revelation, Tenchu?_ What is it? What is she searching for?

And then the microphone is cool and heavy in her clammy hand and she has the floor, has their breathlessness, their unblinking faith_ the spirits spoke to us with the answer, chose me and my father, gave us the power to take bending away permanently _Korra rings on their souls, the crowd is waiting with baited breath _and now for a demonstration _and then the crowd seethes and boils with hate, an immense tide of anger, flooding onto the stage as Zolt and the men and Bolin are dragged into the blinding spotlights.

Her father moves like a man freed from gravity, weightless and calm as Zolt's lighting lands sizzling and spitting onto the stage, and it splutters into a huge feather of fire as Amon pins the block to his chakras through his neck and it dies with a sigh _your firebending is gone forever_

He makes short work of the other men and then he takes the fourth - leaves Bolin to her. She is ready. To block is to overwhelm their heartbeat with your own, consume their rhythms, unravel their threads of chi – can you feel it, Korra, each throbbing chakra – each one hangs inside you like stars on a chain – you have to cut each one off, you count down from _seven, six, five_ on your heartbeat – she will not hesitate – Amon glides and breezes like the wind around the man's desperate earthbending, forces him to his knees, she is empty and serene, the noise of the crowd is but a shadow over still water – _four, three, two,_ he collapses with a moan as Amon severs the last chakra – and now it's just Bolin left and she will make her father proud and she advances, blood searing through her, tangled through with the cold light of the full moon. There is no turning back.

* * *

**a/n:** chapter 2 has 2/3 parts completed - Combat and Hurt, with Discovery on the way. Review me _hard_, baby. It encourages me to write.  
p.s.


	3. Combat, Hurt, Plans

**a/n:** OH MAN this went through like eight drafts, no joke. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who reviewed, favorited, and followed! I really am so grateful. As for the reviewer who asked if Amon killed Korra's parents, because it was vague... yeah, it was vague, wasn't it? (I don't know. Maybe. I think so. Ask me again in a few chapters.)

Anywho, may I present chapter 2. Enjoy.

* * *

_I. Combat _

_You're a bully._

No, it's not bullying to cleanse, to equalize, to gut Bolin of his bending, cleanly and bloodlessly. The only thing bending brings is suffering. So Korra takes a step towards Bolin, and then another. He winces widely, tapping the tips of his fingers together; he looks peaky, sweating under the spotlight. She's not sorry. Tenchu toys with her food before she eats it, stalking and predatory.

"Uhm… hello, Tenchu, miss? I still think there's been a… big… misunderstanding," he babbles.

She won't hesitate. She _can't_. She takes another step, rolling off her heel; she is dense with power, she is doing what needs to be done, for the sake of equality, freedom, herself –

There is a massive, curling whip of lightning from somewhere in the crowd, arcing and twisting through the air, and it slams into the stage lights with a furious, crackling _BOOM_. The lights explode, plunging the warehouse in deep pitch blackness, and the crowd shrieks and screams as smoke tumbles and rolls onto the stage. A thick howling arc of fire sweeps over them, casting everyone in reddish orange light, and as her fellow Equalists scatter, someone is grabbing Korra from behind, shielding her from the flames –

"You know what to do," Amon says, and he releases her, disappearing into the dark, rolling clouds of smoke.

Korra leaps off the stage, skidding on the warehouse floor, and swings her head around through the fleeing crowd – she saw the man, his face alight with the glow of fire, and he was wearing a red scarf, but most of all she had seen a familiar, worn-out color of impulsive, desperate action. There is a flash of yellow and orange on the far end of the floor, by the stage somewhere – he's fighting someone off – and she runs after him, legs pumping the floor, heart pounding, propelled on excitement.

She bursts through a door, finds herself in the same hallway as before, empty and full of yellow light. Someone disappears around the corner at the far end, a brief flare of red, and she hears a scuffling struggle behind her, loud protests and the muffled sound of heavy blows.

"Get your hands off me, you big – _ungh_!"

Korra doesn't hesitate.

She throws herself against the wall and slams a fist into the Equalist's temple as he comes through the door, frog-marching Bolin, bound again, before him. The Equalist staggers to the side and collapses with a grunt, out cold, and Korra spins Bolin around and does the first thing that comes to mind – she has to go find that firebender, _now_. She sets her hand on fire and it tears through her senses, releasing a sudden, delirious vertigo – fire is, fire is _what?_ – and she slices through the ropes, burning them off. They flop to the floor, charred ends smoking, and he just stands there speechless.

"Don't just fucking stand there, run!" she yells, and shoves him away. He stumbles backwards, stares at her _stop staring, just run, go, damnit, go!_ and he throws her a look over his shoulder as he starts running down the hallway. The firebender is the apex of her frenetic rage now… the firebender, who burned through her first chance to prove herself and made himself the second. It's easier this way. It's so simple to hate firebenders… she can't possibly hesitate now.

She swivels and sprints down the other way, down the hall; she flies past the place where Amon slapped her and swerves around the corner – and crumples with a coarse grunt over someone's outstretched arm. She lands hard on her back, organs shunting into each other, all the air forced out of her lungs.

The man makes a fist around the collar of her uniform and lifts her bodily to the wall. She kicks out and scrabbles at his grip, she can't reach anything on him: he's too tall and long-limbed. His eyes are flakes of gold in a fine-lined, angry face, and he's just edged out of childhood, he's _young_. He twists his hand and lifts her higher.

"Where's the last earthbender who was on stage?! Tell me!" he roars, and she snarls as he yanks her mask off and throws it aside, pulling back a hand tensed full of fire.

She can't block any of his _chi_ points like this and he's looking for Bolin, Bolin the _earthbender_, and again she acts on impulse – it comes naturally, so naturally, she can't stop it – she hits the wall with her fist. A clump of plaster and bricks bursts out and catches him hard in the gut, and he drops her with a winded _oomfgh_, stumbling backwards, landing in a clumsy sprawl. She lands nimbly on all fours, fingers splayed on the ground, and grins. Now it's her turn.

Korra sends the bricks skittering across the floor as she takes him by the lapels and heaves him into the wall – she hits him once – twice – right in the sternum, blocking him from the pool of _chi_, punches into the curves of muscle on his upper arm and shoulder, numbing them, making them useless. His other arm shoots out and she takes his wrist, pulls him away from the wall, slides under and folds him to his knees with a forceful, triumphant twist.

Korra _chi_-blocks his other arm with three more firm, assertive hits and lets it dangle. She slips one hand under the scarf to the back of his neck and clenches the other around his face, dimpling his skin with the grip of her fingers.

They're alone in the hallway, and it yawns with a shallow silence. The overhead lights flicker and sputter _bzzt bzzap_, casting angular shards of shadows onto the walls, and she tilts his face up to meet hers. He struggles, trying to move his arms, but they're limp from the strength of her _chi_ block and Korra holds him steady, pressing in closer.

"You're mine," she pants, her hair falling loose around her, damp with sweat, "deal with it."

His eyes are full of yellow, gleaming panic. She can see herself in their glossy shine – the huge swirls of black, the jagged curve of her mouth, teeth bared like a dog. So that's what Tenchu looks like, under her mask, the shining star child of the Equalists.

"Just wanna know – 'bout earthbender," he says, voice strangled and short. He wants Bolin. She let Bolin go… how easy would it be to just let this one go too, show him where Bolin went, _I didn't find him, the firebender got away…_? It's odd, to be trapped between sympathy and shame, and she only has the energy to carry one of them. The spot where Amon slapped her sears anew.

Shame, then.

"I'll tell you, if you tell me what's it like to firebend," she says, voice twisting into a hiss, inches over him, "why so many firebenders are thugs, and murderers. What's it like to be someone like _you_?"

He blanches, makes an incoherent noise, he's stricken with – with guilt – _good_. Someone like him killed her mother, hurt her father; she hates him so much. And she hates how fire feels – how it's like painting with the sun, swoops and arcs and billows of reds and yellows, how each hovering drop of fire over her palm starts from a spark that sings sharply through her nerves, a keen uncoiling of energy… How when it flickers and snaps and dances on her fingertips, she herself is breathlessly, unerringly _alive_ and he can feel that power too, that singing surge of living… is he the one who told Bolin it was _okay_?

"Ts' terrible," he says suddenly, in a compressed rasp, and she opens her grip just a fraction; "like carrying death around… not supposed to be that way."

He cuts off. Korra stops hating him, almost; her ferocity is cut out from under her. She studies him, tracing the lines of his face, and he closes his eyes helplessly on her touch, a light tremor running through him. There is a sort of misshapen understanding written there, like all his tension, all the fear, the anger in his expression is spelled wrong, but it's there... maybe he wonders the same things she does. Can fire kill a man without burning him? How can fire leave a man so cold?

"That's why I'm going to equalize you," she says, bits of some old speech careening through her head, "so you'll finally be free of your bending.

She has no choice because this is the only way to please Amon, to make him proud - the hug on the roof is infinitely distant because _Korra, you're a disgrace_ and she will do what needs to be done. Korra lifts her hand and tenses it over his forehead, knuckles aching with the strain. _Do not hesitate._

"Relax," she mutters, as his eyes widen, irises quivering, "it'll only take a second."

"Mako!? NO!"

The yell comes barreling down the hallway and she looks up, hand suspended in the air. Bolin is standing a dozen yards away, shocked, mouth agape, and Mako shouts, "Do something!"

With a huge, swift effort, Bolin sweeps his fists into the air, and the floor beneath her ripples and buckles, tossing pieces of concrete into the air. She and Mako tumble apart, and she spills to the floor, his red scarf in hand, as a cluster of concrete smashes into her ribcage with a dull, dense crack–_ unnfgh!_ Mako springs to his feet and kicks out with a curve of fire; she flings her arms over her head – the heat gusts away and she squints through the gap between her wrists. Bolin and Mako are sprinting away; she tries to move but the pain in her ribs screams and stabs at her muscles and she has to hug the floor, gasping for air.

Their footsteps fade away and her heart loses all its form, turning to smoke in her breast, and a taut, aching soreness pools into her throat. The cracked concrete is cool under her skin, and the ceiling spins and tilts in the quiet. She fumbles out, dizzy with pain, and clutches the scarf just to hold on to something, because she's about to fall off the ground, and the reality that she failed make lazy loops around her throbbing head, she failed she failed _she_ _failed…_

_II. Hurt_

She hasn't moved in almost an hour, lying on her side as despondence pools around her, listening to the sound of her own thin breathing. She coughs and the pain in her chest forces her insides apart, squelching the muscles and bones around with a heavy brick of agony. Something slides down the side of her mouth and she touches it, holds it into the light; the shiny red slime of blood on her fingers.

Korra has to get home somehow. But she doesn't want to go like this, stumbling over her own incompetence, a bruised and beaten mess, without her dignity. But she has to go home, explain herself – she rolls onto her back and tries to sit up but the pain bursts and spills again, rolling through her like a wave, swerving to the top of her head with a lightweight rush and she's just going to have to wait. And he'll just have to come find her… he won't like that…

She waits all night long and before she knows it,

Korra is somewhere else.

It's somewhere very different from the floor of an abandoned hallway, and she's not really even there because she's also _someone_ else, maybe, someone she wears like finding an old coat that fits just like you remember, warm and worn and comforting, and she lets it wrap around her… these hands aren't hers, they have the sky on them. How do you trap the sky on your hands like this? And that girl, her smile, her eyes, they love her. They plant a sapling of slow-growing joy that creeps around Korra's soul, vine-like and green and full of promise. Korra knows who she is, somehow… that girl set her free from something…

…something cold. Set her free from… something dark and watery and unbreakable – a wall of ice? And now there is a leaf on the wind, flakes of pale color, fluttering around them, snowy and soft but there is warmth and a flower blossom in the hand that is not quite _her _hand, but it's as natural as her own breathing…

The sky on her hands begs the breeze and the breeze begs her hands, and then the air is cupped and spilling off her fingertips, and the flower blossom floats to the girl on nothing, nothing at all except a wide stream of sunlight and the current of the girl's laughter, bright with the color of joy and desire and Korra sees it now, the sky is not trapped in these hands. It moves through them. She is lilting in the wind but _why is it so familiar? Why? _

_Who is holding me? _She falls back into herself as someone carries her down the hallway and the pain throbs and pangs with each step. _Stop, I need to know why! _She is only vaguely aware of weak, shifting light playing on the edges of her vision, something rumbling and vibrating underneath her, a rumbling mechanical animal. _Stop, stop, take me back…_ and she wants to stay, stay curled up in that somewhere else, a page torn from some old book she never read but somehow she knew all the words…

_Take me back, I need to go back…_

"Back to the warehouse? I'm taking you home, you stupid girl," says Amon, from somewhere inside of her. Korra is turned inside out, all the pain is outside and she is warm from some slow-burning coal.

"No, not there, take me _back_," she mumbles. Her teeth chatter together and he calms her with a touch to her forehead.

"Sir? Are you sure you shouldn't be taking her to a healer?" says the Lieutenant, from the driver's seat.

"I will deal with this myself, Lieutenant. Just drive."

The car rolls to a stop as dawn begins to break overhead, streetlights blinking out and going dark, spots of dirt on the cool blue canvas of an early morning sky. Korra groans as Amon shifts out from under her, laying her head on the leather seat, and she reaches for him through the open car door, through the aching sharp knot in her chest, her fingers catching only air.

"Dad," she gasps, "Dad… no, wait… "

Amon pulls her gently, firmly from the car and lifts her.

"Return the car to Sato, if you will, Lieutenant," he says, and she hears the doors slam shut and the turn of the engine through a hazy half-awareness. The air darkens and cools as Amon turns and walks down a side street, the dawn hours still and silent, drifting in the space between dreaming and waking. Korra's dangling fist is sore and she holds it up, bunched around something bright red and woolly. She's still clutching that damn scarf.

"You were adamant on keeping that," he says, and she just goes _mmmfgh_ in reply and lets it drag on the asphalt. He shoulders his way through a wooden door, tucked down a narrow grey alleyway, and then he is climbing the stairs and Korra rocks slightly with each step. She feels childish, being carried like this; what a burden…

They're home. He takes her to her room, lays her on the bed; unbuckles the belt and folds the coat and black undershirt away, exposing the massive, mottled bloom of sickly green-yellow-blues on her brown skin. Amon thumbs the blood off her face and puts two fingers to her neck, feeling her pulse. He relaxes his palm lightly on her chest and she winces, sucking in air - there is an odd crackling gravel sound at the center of pain.

"Your ribs are broken," he says, "badly."

He takes his mask off, drops it onto the floor, and wipes his face with a weary, drawn hand, smearing make-up and sweat into thick lines and clumps. He leaves and she can hear the tap running into the basin in the kitchen: he's washing the scar off, blustering in the cold water. Noatak comes back a few minutes later, carrying a pot of water. He pulls a chair up to her bedside and puts his hands over the bruise, water snaking over them and glowing a clear light blue.

The pain, overheated and shrill, slows down and stops. The water washes over her and into her, clearing out the aching, the burning. It all flakes off and floats away.

"Dad – Dad, I'm sorry, I messed up, I'm sorry…" Korra says, in an undertone, and her breath hitches on a sharp tug of bones snapping back together, and then another.

"Be quiet," he says, and there is a different kind of pain now. She rolls her head away from him, her world skewing on its side, her bed sheets splitting themselves apart in double vision. She's nauseous, despite the healing. Her gut is hollow and all of her nerves are melting into sour bile that slides up her throat, and she is just waiting, waiting for the storm to break… the silence weighs heavily, muggy with a humid, sticky kind of dread. She can feel his disappointment, his anger, breaking across her again and again; a wave of grief closes over her.

"Dad, I'm sorry," she tries again, and his eyes are metallic and starry and full of the healing glow of the water. He cups a hand around her cheek, turns her face to him. The hot soreness in her neck coils behind her eyes and they mist over, blurring him. Noatak brushes her damp disarray of bangs to her ear, sweeps down her cheek with his fingertips.

"I told you not to disappoint me," he says smoothly; "did I not?"

His voice is sinuous, threading and spooling through her like cutting wire.

"Not only that - not only that, Korra, but you did something else."

He pulls something out from the breast of his uniform, and her heart plummets. The charred ropes, with their blackened, fire-cut ends, hang from his fist, and he drops them with disgust.

"That was the firebender, he – "

"We both know… it was _not_ the firebender," he says, in a steady, ringing voice, and Korra stops the lie, hastily swallowing it down; "it was you. It was you and your own petty fears, your spinelessness. You shame me and you betray your mother's memory with your pathetic lack of conviction."

Each word guts her slowly. She is raw, and foolish.

He casts a glance towards the ropes and then fits her with a hard, fractured look, working something over in his mind.

"Just fire, I presume?"

"No," she moans, covering her eyes with one hand, "earth, too."

Several years' worth of silence passes between them.

Noatak sighs but he doesn't need to say anything, and he doesn't need to. Her misery laces through her mind, fine silk threads stitching together, closing the tears in the torn fabric of thought: the only thing bending brings is suffering. Why, why, _why_ was she so weak?

"You're entirely useless, injured like this," he says, in a kind of afterthought, and Korra feels an animalistic anger steal into the rawness. He sent her after that firebender, after all.

"Maybe if you didn't treat me like some pawn – "

"Maybe if you would just do as I say, for once!" he snarls, and the water splashes onto her bare skin as his hands seize up suddenly, the pain snapping back into place, shuddering all over her – and for a split second, it tightens vice-like around her veins, hard, and cold, like ice forcing its way into her blood, flash-freezing through her muscles – she can't even flinch –

And everything relaxes, flooding with heat, as Noatak starts and releases the blood-bending hold. He bows his head, pulling on his face, and exhales, a long, drawn-out sigh of frustration and disappointment.

"I hate you," Korra wants to say, and doesn't. She just rolls onto her good side, away from him, and glowers into the pillow, a deep, heavy exhaustion settling in her from somewhere beyond a simple need to sleep. She wishes he would just be happy, for once; be happy with her, the child born to him, instead of the feral thing squirming in the space behind the Tenchu mask. She can't even bring herself to do it, to just be happy with _Korra_.

"Korra. I…"

"Don't touch me," she mutters flatly, and his hand vanishes from her shoulder.

And then, after a forested silence, he leaves, shutting the door behind him. There are too many things growing in the quiet untouched hollows of their shared earth.

_III. Plans_

In the colorless, restless hours of sleep that follow, Noatak wakes Korra up once, to ask her if she knows their names, the names of the earthbender and the firebender. She tells him, and before he leaves again, he detaches the scarf from her grip, taking it with him.

She knows what he's doing, even drifting in a current of half-sleep. Years of careful construction mean that the Equalist spy network is as unobtrusive and unnoticeable as a brick on a building façade, cemented into the institutions of the city. He is digging for them, for Mako and Bolin. They have to be found. They know her secret.

Noatak wakes her up again, much later, with a firm shake. The room is dark, and by the color of the light on the apartment building through the window, Korra can tell it's long into the afternoon. She slept all day.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like shit," she says, propping herself up on her forearms, and throwing back the blanket that wasn't there before, "but my ribs feel fine."

His face darkens and his eyes flutter, like he's trying to restrain something.

"I found your friends," he says, coolly, "we should go pay them a visit."

Korra rolls her legs off the bed and clasps her hands between her knees, staring at the carpet. Her mind is still a bit of a fog. Things rush to her, sinking their teeth into the hazy after-peace of sleep: that weird dream. Mako and Bolin both saw her bend. And the full moon isn't over yet… and he said…

"…'we'?" she asks, carefully.

"_We_."

She sits up straight now, narrowing her eyes, her mouth tight and small. He doesn't trust her.

"So… are you, or am I…?"

"You are," he says, a solid statement of fact.

Korra resists the urge to slouch, to collapse, to go right back to bed and find that dream and get out of this... this _trap_. She stares at him, completely still, blanking her face. _Fine_.

"Time to get ready."

He holds out a hand, palm up, and she takes it.

They leave the apartment not long after, sneaking down the fire escape and into the alleyway behind the building. She can feel the full moon, though she can't see it - a cool, feather touch through her skin and into her core. It refreshes her, relaxes her; and she looks at Noatak as he pulls the tarps off their motorcycles with a flourish and checks them over. Does he feel it too? Is it a waterbender thing? Or just her?

She fiddles with the sleeves of her grey and blue jacket, piped with white, picking at a stray thread. They're dressed in civilian clothing, for once, but he has their masks in his satchel. And she tugs absently on the wolftails in her hair, the only hairstyle he knew how to teach her way back when.

The trepidation from last night is coming back to her, slowly, rising like a tide, lapping at her feet. Korra swings a leg over her motorcycle and kicks her heels out, stiff and waiting; down the alleyway, the main street gapes wide, full of dim streetlight. She takes in the tinny chirp of crickets, ringing out from somewhere in the abandoned wooden crates and urban refuse; the distant hollow howl of Satomobiles on the broadways rustling in through the cables and wires overhead. Something lonely and old is limping into the borough, dragging its hoarse breaths.

She feels bad for Bolin, and Mako, sort of. They're on the breeze somewhere, thinking they're safe from the Equalists, from her… but Tenchu might not survive a rumor of bending abilities. She knows Noatak doesn't even want to take the risk. Korra feels worse for herself.

Noatak's presence is dense, drawing in all the sound and light, flattening them. He straddles his motorcycle and hands her a sheet of paper, covered in writing. She reads it over, squinting in the half-light. _Narook's Seaweed Noodlery, Central City Plaza, Probending Arena, Fire Water Four Ball…_

"We start with the restaurant and take each place after that, in order. We stay close together. If we don't find them by dawn, we come home and start again tomorrow. Do you understand?" he says, running his hands through his fine, jet-black hair.

Korra nods, buttoning the straps of her leather driving gloves across the back of her hands. She understands, of course; understands that they're going to be punished for her mistake – she corrects herself – _no, the only thing bending brings is _– they're going to be equalized. Korra closes her eyes, upturning her thoughts, searching for that animal, that thing that seethes on open wounds and weaknesses with hot, fetid breath, delirious and high on rage and hatred... slake its hunger for the oppressive and cruel. Bending scum. It's there, somewhere; she can sense it, but it's not quite awake.

Noatak tenses, broad shoulders rising rigidly, and tilts her chin up with a gloved hand.

"_No hesitation_," he says, holding her gaze, and his voice is somehow darker than the falling night sky. Korra bats his hand away and grabs the grips, locking her joints, allowing herself a few seconds of fuming. She fits her goggles to her face, feeling the leather snug and firm against her cheeks.

"I know, can we just go already?" she gripes, slouching over the motorcycle handlebars, and in response he slides his driving goggles down his face and kicks his own bike into gear, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

They roar through the streets, down the Kya Boulevard, wind whipping at their hair, breezing past trucks and automobiles like growling iron leopard-snakes. The city slides past her at high speed, blurring into streaks of gold light on a coarse brown canvas of bricked lines and shapes. The Avatar's city, built on a cheap, hopeless dream of harmony and balance, crumbling over its foundation of delusion. It is her city now.

They reach Narook's Noodlery and make a full loop around the block, quickly and efficiently, peering down alleyways and the emptying streets. They bring their motorbikes stuttering to a stop a dozen yards away from the entrance and kill the engines to lean over on stiff legs, pausing as the sound of vibrant jazz braids to the smell of savory meats and seafood. It all wafts out through the door curtains, light and full of flavor. At last the full moon is out, a fat, shining white coin gleaming on the navy blue sky, and Korra idly counts stars.

It was about this time last night that… that thing with the Avatar statue happened, where she felt _someone_ there, and Korra holds herself in that memory for a moment. It had just been so… uncanny. But it was just a dumb statue of some irrelevant dead guy. What a great beacon of harmony, or whatever. He couldn't even bother to come back for another go at life. She snorts to herself, under her breath. _Tch_.

"Dad. What's the plan?" she asks, twisting in her seat, hands resting on her thighs, as he takes the goggles off, shaking his head.

"You tell me," he says, leaning forward, forearms draped over the handles, and she scowls down the street. He's loosening the hold, giving her a chance… and if her plan fails, it'll be her fault, again. _Useless. Prove yourself._ It's the same thing, over and over and over. Prove herself for what? She is tired of weathering his storm.

"Okay. You go around the back to that alleyway, and if they're here, I'll flush them out to you," she says. It's not the best idea, but he hums in agreement, twisting the throttle, the engine churning back to life - and she throws out a hand.

"Wait, do you have that scarf?"

Noatak wordlessly draws it out of the satchel and tosses it into her outstretched hand. She catches it and it's bundled around something, her mask. He swerves the bike in a tight curve around her, rumbling on low into the alleyway towards the back of Narook's, disappearing into the shadows.

Korra slings the scarf around her neck and tucks the mask down her jacket, fitting it to the curve of her side. She laces her fingers together, stretching; palms facing out, feeling muscles pull and joints crack in her back and shoulders. She can do this, she can totally do this, she's not afraid... She doesn't really have a choice, anyway, and Korra comes down on the kickstand with a bit more force than necessary, settling the motorbike under a lamppost. She looks down the street, towards the bay behind all the buildings, where she knows the Avatar statue is rising out of the sea, steadfast and faithful to his city… the symbol of bending, all four nations living in peace. Bending, in peace.

She strolls up to Narook's, deliberately casual, no funny business, no sir... and stops dead, right outside the doorway, staring through the curtains. Bolin and Mako are there, in the back of the restaurant. _Right there. And they're eating noodles like it's no big fucking deal that she's going to waltz in and take their bending what the fuck are they doing_

Korra wheels around and scoots out of sight, shrinking up against the paneled outer wall, closing her eyes.

She is going to do what her father wants her to do, to make him happy, to prove herself. She is going to take their bending. She wants to be useful. She _is_ useful and he _loves_ her and Tenchu is _just_ a construct to sway the masses… She wants him to be proud of her. It's an opaque, heavy desire, swirling like an oil slick across the surface of everything... but there is another desire, deep down inside, buried and hibernating for some forbidden season of spring. Korra wants to learn bending. She feels it in her bones, in her blood, in the way water answers her call like an old friend and the way fire caresses her hands like a lover. She hides it, at the bottom of everything else; waiting for when she can coax it into life, rouse it…

A city of… harmony, was it? And balance.

Korra opens her eyes and smiles.

She has a plan.

* * *

Alright chapter 3 is 1.2k words in and going strong sooooo y'all can expect an update in less than two weeks.


	4. Surprises, Truths

**A/N:** once again, thank you all so much for reviews, follows, and favorites! it encourages me to do my best :D and i'm glad y'all are enjoying it. i'm enjoying writing it, for sure. anywho, here's your update!

* * *

**I. Surprises**

Korra spreads her hands flat on the wood, gripping the edge of the table with her thumbs, eyes narrowed at Bolin and Mako. They are clear across the restaurant, in a booth under a Water Tribe flag, ruffled and loose, full of scruffy, second-hand street charm. They didn't see her walk in, engrossed as they are in their bowls of noodles; she sidles into a seat and tugs her gloves off with her teeth. She's annoyed with them, almost angry - why did they have to be found so easily? Didn't they know they had to run? She makes a moue at the menu, sliding quickly down the words, barely reading.

She glances over the top of the menu at Bolin, who doesn't look all the worse for wear after being held captive for two days; he's slurping up seaweed noodles with unbridled enthusiasm, jabbing and drawing in the air with his chopsticks, talking with his mouth full. There's a fire ferret curled on his shoulders and he reaches back to set it on the table, offer it a tidbit… Mako says something and Bolin laughs easily, closing his eyes and letting his mirth roll and tumble from his mouth, head tilted back. _You have a nice smile,_he said, and she smiles now.

But Mako… she swings her attention to Mako, sleeplessly serious, eyes bright and narrow, amber shards of glass. She puts her chin on her knuckles and glares at him, daring him to turn around, to look at her. Explain himself. Firebending is like death, what the fuck…? His movements are drier than Bolin's, and more precise; if he broke he would crunch. Mako is too young to be withering, stuck in some red, flame-treed autumn, but then Bolin says something to him, with a cheeky grin and knowing look, and Mako's face floods with a lush, fresh happiness. There is a ripple of relief in its wake.

She sees it now: when Mako softens, he looks like Bolin, somewhere around the eyes and in the quirk of his lips. Something sounds clearly, a single strum of some chord deep inside her. They're brothers, family. They fought for each other.

Amon is waiting outside. She empties, everything lurching downwards; only her heartbeat clambers up and it clings to her throat. Alright, the plan. She has a plan. Time to do something with it.

"Honey, Mako and Bolin are not on the menu," someone says, and Korra starts. The waitress has one eyebrow cocked over a charmless smirk, hand on her hip, and she taps the menu with two fingers. Korra grins sheepishly and shrugs.

"Oh! Um, I wasn't… I didn't - can I just get a glass of water, for now?" she says, and the waitress rolls her eyes and makes to leave, but Korra stops her, grabbing her elbow.

"Actually, do you have a pen and a piece of paper?"

The waitress hands her the pen and a scrap of paper and Korra frowns over it, thinking… All she has to do is scare them out the back. The pen waits an inch over the paper as she sorts through ideas that fly by like automobiles on the breezeway, and finally one screeches to a halt and she scribbles it out, bolding it over twice.

Korra folds it, yanks the scarf off her neck, and hands both to the waitress.

"Can you give this to Mako? Oh, but don't tell him it's from me, it's a surprise," she says cheerfully, impulsively adding a wink, and she feels the nervous creep of sweat down her back. There are so many ways this could go wrong.

"That's Mako's scarf, he loves that thing," the waitress says, framing Korra with a look that reeks of distrust, and Korra smiles as radiantly as possible.

"Yeah, he left it with me last night on accident," she says, and the waitress hums a skeptical, unamused note, _hmmph_. She stares down her nose at Korra, who forces the smile wide open, because she is innocent and charming and cute and it's _true_that Mako left it with her last night, she's not lying…

"Well, it's about time that boy got himself a lady friend, anyway," says the waitress in an undertone, as she takes the scarf and the note, and Korra traps a conspiratorial giggle in its place with a finger to her lips, _don't tell him_.

The waitress leaves and Korra scowls, sticking her tongue out at the woman's retreating back. She's not some dumb fling for Pretty Boy over there, excuse _you_; she's a motherfucking revolutionary.

She slouches back in the booth, rubbing the soft leather of her driving gloves between her fingers, waiting. Narook's is busy, packed full of hungry Republic city residents; the chatter and smell of hot savory foods swirls around her, tempering her nerves. Out of the bustle someone laughs loudly and there is a clatter-clack of glasses clinking together, heavy bowls rasping woodenly as they're pushed across tables, the tick of chopsticks, a woman tossing her head with a flash of red-stained lips.

Korra puts a hand to her side, feeling for the sore spot where her ribs broke, and finds the hard edge of the Tenchu mask through the cloth of her jacket. She pulls it out and holds it under the table, turning it over, and over again; no one else has to hide themselves behind the sleek, impenetrable face of an idea. They're normal people, all of them. Korra stares at them, stares through them, and she realizes she's alone, burned out like a single point of darkness in a sky full of stars. The loneliness comes to her with untroubled ease, sighs around her, flits up her awareness with light sparrow wings. She would fly off with it, if she could; be someone else for a change, maybe…

The waitress finally passes by the brothers' table, dropping the scarf in front of Mako, catching him in the middle of an open-handed gesture. His expression stiffens. Bolin claps a hand to his mouth, a jerk of muscle in his throat as he gulps. Mako hesitantly takes the scarf, turning it over like he's disturbed something wild and snarling. His eyes are wide and disbelieving. Korra sinks low in her seat, watching with grim satisfaction as Bolin's earlier good cheer washes off, leaving only a slightly ill color. Mako unfolds the note.

He looks absolutely bewildered.

Bolin plucks the note from his hand and reads it, flips it over, finds nothing on the back, and they stare at it, dumbfounded - Korra feels an irrepressible urge to laugh and she presses the back of her hand to her mouth, slightly stunned. She wasn't _that_obtuse, was she? The plan had to work. She let them know she was here, and she told them exactly what she was going to do, and now they had fair warning -

Mako slaps the note to the table and jerks his head around, scanning the restaurant; Korra dives below the table and counts, to whatever, skipping numbers, her heart pumping crazily - she peeks over the table, nose rubbing against the wood, and then sits up straight, casually, brushing dust off her shoulder…

Bolin is leaving the table, fire ferret perched daintily on his shoulders; he locks eyes with Mako for a brief second and then strolls casually past the kitchen service counter, disappearing into the back. Korra allows herself a single exhilarated laugh, all of her tension slackening for a brief moment, and she pulls it tight again for Mako, who hasn't left the table yet.

He winds the scarf loosely around his neck, stroking it absently, and holds the note out again, brows bunched up, mouth crooked sideways - and he breaks like slate as dread hits him, grey and fractured. He throws yuans onto the wood, clambers out of the booth, and runs after Bolin, caught in a furious panic, slamming past the waitress.

Korra stands up, slowly, and follows him. They did better than expected, leaving separately… She winds through the restaurant; brushing past tables on light, steady feet, leaning around waiters with trays piled high. Her mask is tucked up her sleeve, fingers curled around the edge, and when she passes by their table, Korra takes the note and rips it into pieces as she goes, scattering them to the floor.

She slips through the service door, past the kitchen, down a short, cluttered storage hallway, holding a tight-lipped smile. The sounds of the kitchen fade away and she straps her mask on in one fluid movement. Tenchu rises in her, primal and animalistic, alert and warm with bloodlust and hatred but Korra forces it out, as much as she can. Tenchu only needs to show up, not to act…

She stops in the door to the alley, her shadow cast large and solid across the ground, and waits - it's quiet, very quiet. She collects herself, listening, gathering all her senses to her; and then fire snaps across the air, a flaming dart, illuminating the Amon mask - there is a brutal _crack_and a long cry of pain through clenched teeth, and she follows the sound to where Mako is standing with one broken hand curled to his torso, grimacing and braced with hopeless bravery. Bolin is kneeling some ways away, hands tied with bolas; face pained and on the verge of tears. The fire ferret is cowering by his foot, fur standing on edge. The alleyway is full of shallow darkness, crossed with swaths of light from windows high above them.

"Tenchu, so glad you could join us. I'm just about finished," Amon drawls, through his glacial feline smirk; and he steps forward on graceful feet, soft as a shadow, dancing around Mako, whipping his fists up Mako's sides, each one bodily making their mark. Mako's stance loosens and goes limp even as he still stands; all of his tensed-up power and strength stripped down and weakened with each blow. Amon takes his arm and dips low, kicking out; the kick catches Mako's leg and he topples to the ground, his good hand trapped by Amon's hold. It takes all of three seconds.

Mako scrabbles for purchase with his feet, kicking up bits of gravel and dust, still trying to fight; there is a brief moment where he doesn't move at all and then a curling lick of fire sprays from his mouth. Amon barely reacts and cuts it off with a hit to the neck, eyes flickering with the fire, with hate. Korra never forgets how powerful he is, but it still, _always_stuns her -

"Stop! Mako, stop, _please,_" Bolin pleads, his voice cracking over a high pitch, and they all look at him. He shakes his head at his brother, the motion trailing off, and Mako stops clawing at Amon with his broken hand. He raises it over his head with a torturously calm expression, chest heaving.

"If you would be so kind as to assist," Amon says, looking over his shoulder at Korra, and she goes to him. They tie Mako's hands together and Amon hauls him to his feet by the knot, giving him a strong shove in Bolin's direction, and Mako staggers over and sinks to his knees in front of his brother.

"It would've been worse for you," Bolin mumbles, and Mako says nothing but loops his arms around Bolin, hugging him into the curve of his neck.

"Touching," Amon says, standing over them, and Mako's glare would set things ablaze.

Amon looks at Korra and motions to them.

"Your plan was perfect," he says, and she thinks - _not yet; _"all that is left is to do what - "

" - needs to be done," she finishes swiftly, "I know."

Her heart is racing as she walks over to them. Did they understand her note at all? Did they get it? Oh spirits, she'd been too cryptic, way too cryptic… Did they understand? Because she needed them to understand, so badly, to just go with it, to trust her - Mako drops his head onto Bolin's shoulder, staring down into some long and distant memory, some other alleyway.

Korra glances at her father. He is motionless, waiting, watching.

"Alright, Mr. Fancy Lightning," and Korra cracks her knuckles, standing behind Mako, "You go first."

She fits her hand to the back of his neck, but he remains pressed to Bolin, stiff and resistant as she tries to tilt his head back -

"You can't stop this from happening," she says, "when are you going to get the message?"

His eyes widen almost imperceptibly and suddenly he is passive under her hand, cheeks hollowed from the tense clamp of his jaw. He looks up at her, and there is a spark of something underneath the fear, like a distant crack of lightning behind a storm cloud: understanding. And then, thundering after it, as Korra raises her hand, _trust_-

_I'M GOING TO FAKE IT_

He got it.

Korra hits him in the center of the forehead, his skin warm and slick with sweat to the touch, her thumb planted firmly over the Third Eye, fingers splayed down the side of his face - he shudders and there is a long, long, _long _pause, a thousand years of doubt between seven seconds of silence behind her mask of calm and purpose - she doesn't search, doesn't cut, doesn't beat him down with the frantic drumming of her own heart - she just holds him there -

She lets go, takes a step back; and he goes limp over Bolin with a soft moan. Perfect.

"Your turn," Korra says to Bolin, lifting aside Mako's arms; Bolin squeaks, an incomprehensible whimper of despair, as Mako keels over sideways, hitting the asphalt, the whites of his eyes like flakes off a candle burning low. Bolin reaches for Mako but Korra pulls on his collar, sitting him upright, and he gasps when her hand hits his neck, high-pitched and breathless; she sees movement, careful, pale movement - Mako's fingers on Bolin's knee, and his slack open mouth shifts, ever so slightly… _play along._

Bolin screws his eyes shut, lips curled back over his teeth; and Korra does it again - absolutely nothing. She lifts her hands and he slouches over himself, panting; a drop of sweat rolls off his chin and lands noiselessly _plit_! on his pants. She sighs, and Amon's slow nod of approval is dim and weak from her airless spot at the bottom of her vast, rolling ocean of relief. It's done. She almost laughs, wiping her hands on her jacket, the clammy sweat and dirt of her lie.

Amon moves to her; holds her by the shoulders. _Good work_. She smiles as he taps her affectionately on the cheek, a light glancing touch of pride, cool and soft on her flushed skin. Her happiness loops in from his fingertips and spools through her, and she fills like a sail, billowing in a heady wind of joy. Her soul flutters in his wake as he brushes by her and she's done: her plan is finished, he is happy with her.

Amon lays Mako flat with a solid kick of his heel to the shoulder, drawing a helpless _oomph_from him; Mako opens his hands in a gesture of supplication, his fingers curled weakly around an offering of surrender. The part of his broken hand not covered by the glove is puffy and red, nothing that can't be fixed with some quick healing or a splint. He is lined with exhaustion, creased and indefinite like a paper folded over too many times. Korra wants to get a real answer from him, soon. They would go into the prisoner cells and she knows she'll find a way to sneak down to them, make them teach her bending… it was all part of her plan…

Amon bends on one knee and pulls a Water Tribe hunting knife from the sheath in his boot, slender and honed, and Mako makes a sharp, abrupt grunt of surprise as Amon jerks his head back with a palm to the jaw, exposing his neck, and the knife flashes in his fist -

"No, stop!" Korra yells, lunging forward, and the tip of the knife stops short, a fraction of an inch off Mako's skin. It drops slightly, just barely grazing his neck, and he sucks in a huge hiss of air, his back canted onto the asphalt, eyes closed. Amon looks at her, dull light sliding off the brushed planes of the mask, fist clenched tightly around the hilt.

"Stop _what?_" Amon says, as though there were no knife in his hand, less than an inch and a single motion away from blood pooling across the pavement, Mako choking to death on the flow of his own waning life. He couldn't kill them, she needed them! She needed them alive!

"Don't kill them!" she says, and Amon leans upright, arm draped over his thigh.

"And what else would we do with them? This is all that's left to be done," he says, waving the knife at Mako and Bolin; and the tip drops, poised over Mako.

"That's a big knife, that's a really big knife, oh _spirits,_ that's a big knife…" Bolin mumbles in a breathless sing-song; he can't keep his eyes off it.

"Bolin," Mako says, fingertips fumbling along the flat of the knife, trying to push it away, "Bolin, listen to me, don't look, just close your eyes - "

"I thought we were just gonna take them prisoner," Korra says, plaintively, and she is sick with a lurching horror - even if she didn't need them, this was _murder -_

"That is nothing but inconvenient," Amon says, with an restless patience, "and rest assured, no one is going to miss them. They're dregs."

He's talking to her like a child, like he's explaining the rules of some game; it's a game to him! They're playthings! He would kill them like animals, for convenience! They couldn't die for her foolishness. She couldn't let them die -

"I don't want them to die for my mistake!" she shouts, the words rising crisp and determined, leaves snapping on the wind.

"You should have thought about that last night," Amon says shortly.

And he swings the knife.

But the knife stops short again, in Amon's straining fist, and his eyes snap to her and now, _now_he is angry - she looks at her own outstretched hand, full of the warm, pulsing feel of bloodbending - what is she doing, why can't she just let this go? Tenchu would be fine with this but Korra's never felt so sure of anything in her life -

"What do you think you're doing?!" he growls, but she holds tighter, sinks her grip deeper into the throbbing flow of his blood. They're not going to die, not while she - she is drawing her line at this callous murder, right now -

"No, I won't let you," she breathes, hardly believing it herself, her own conviction, her own lack of hesitation on this - but she knows, she knows like it's the single iron nail hammered into the frame of her existence - she must protect life. He breaks her hold with an amused, irritated snort.

"You insolent child," he says, "I've had enough."

And the knife flies through the air one more time but something breaks in her -

"NO! _I said_ _NO!_"

It folds out of the air, out of the world itself - a white glow, unbraiding and uncoiling into veins that twist and wind - a great glowing web of threads, of smoky strings that crisscross around her and through her - they cling to her, to her infinite fury, to the immense star of purpose burning and flaring hotly in her breast. The threads of chi kiss to her fingertips and she just has to open and all the songs and voices of the world will come to her, sing under her hands. Pluck the strings and send great, serene roars of sound and fury raging across the earth - she is divine - she is waking up -

The Amon mask is pale and flat in the glow. It breaks the balance of sound, jarring dissonantly, calls to her anger, consumes her with uncontrollable, righteous violence. All the bright, glowing lines of chi shrink away from it, its discordance - how much blood can she wring from its splinters? and all she needs is a single thought and all will respond to her voice and _Korra!_

Her rage caves in - drains into the dark hole punched through the tapestry of chi lines, the hole left by the sudden disappearance of the mask - "Korra!"

They whip off her fingertips and each detachment leaves a cold, blistering burn of confusion - Korra is a girl, just a girl - she's adrift in some great cosmic dream, she clings to her name, wooden and solid -

"Korra! Korra, come back!" yells a voice from somewhere close, so close; hot on her ear and pressing around her, someone is holding her - and Korra comes back hard, very hard, landing in herself from a height far above the sky. All her senses slam back, the delirious rush of power gone. Her mind spins and turns in all directions and she reels but Noatak is holding her, his arms wrapped around her so tightly it hurts - and she can feel his heart thudding wildly, straight through her.

She slumps in his embrace, she feels as sturdy and definite as smoke. He curves a hand to her face, steadies her lolling head; his narrow gaze knifes into her, cutting her, looking for something - and his mask is off. It's completely off and his smooth and unscarred face is shining and etched with _fear._

"Dad…?"

He is bloodless and pale. Korra has never seen him like this before, so… so shaken. He holds her out with a relieved sigh and she has no idea what's going on. It's all wafting apart, like ink in water…

"What just happened?" she says, and her own voice sounds alien to her, hoarse and colorless. Noatak quietly sits her on a crate and, with a hesitant movement, fixes her mask, nudging it back into place.

"Dad, what just happened?" she says again, loud and frantic, and he doesn't look at her, just… through her. The Amon mask is several yards away, like it was thrown aside in a panic, and Mako and Bolin are huddled against the wall like they could sink through it if they tried hard enough. Mako is crouched over Bolin, their hands up to shield their faces, and she can just see their expressions, scared and flinched.

She gasps. The alleyway is torn apart, the pavement broken open; jagged teeth of asphalt bared over dark, gaping fissures, and huge, blackened scorch marks snarling across the bricks and plaster. There are crates and barrels and things piled up in craggy, uneven slopes, as though blown away; and part of the wall is cracked and dented inwards, like some enormous round thing smashed into it. And all the twisting slashes of dust and ash and cracks in the pavement converge and knot around a single, untouched spot, the spot where she had been standing, yelling at her father not to kill anyone - and _then_what happened?

"Did I do that?" she asks, and she already knows but the answer terrifies her, and her father has not stopped staring at her, but he won't say anything, why won't he say anything?

"Tell me what happened!" Korra shouts, and finally he breaks off and bows his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I need to go contact the Lieutenant. Do not move until I return," he says in a low, wearied voice, and without looking he clenches his other hand at Mako and Bolin, who promptly collapse, limp against the wall, eyes rolling back as they faint. Noatak picks up his mask from off the ground and turns it over, looking into its empty eyes. He glances at Korra, his mouth tight and closed over some unspoken, distant thoughts. And he stuffs the mask into his jacket, trotting down the alleyway without a word.

Korra curls over her knees, lacing her fingers on the back of her neck. She feels a storm gathering, on the strength of a wind drawn from a dream thousands of years old; and she is the eye of it, struck blind and alone, always alone, in the dark…

**II. Truths**

She waits.

The single bare bulb swings over the empty kitchen, straining and harsh; the window is open and she can feel the night slouch in, sanding its cool, rough fingers down her skin, muttering dark grey shadows under its breath. Korra folds her arms and rests her head on the table, and she waits. She feels the gaze of the Tenchu mask on her, from where it sits on the table; half an eyeless painted skull, taunting her.

Her plan is in shambles, the pieces scattered and kicked into unreachable places. She has no idea where Mako and Bolin are. The Lieutenant came with one of the Equalist trucks and loaded them into the back, fitting her with a look of supreme annoyance; she had stayed on her crate and closed her eyes against the staccato of his anger as he argued with Amon - _what exactly is going on, I don't want to clean up after your disaster of a daughter anymore, this is ridiculous - _and Amon's honeyed baritone, rich and flowing like oil - _this is all part of the revolution, Lieutenant, all part of the plan -_

At least they're alive, she thinks, or she hopes; he didn't speak to her until sending her home with a single phrase and she rode through the city in a daze, unattached to her own self, a cold shadow trailing behind a warm body.

Her fingers are foreign to her, long and calloused; the fine wrinkles and soft creases spell something she can't read, can't understand, can't speak aloud. It drifts just out the reach of her voice.

She hears the metallic crunch of keys turning in a lock and sits up, stuffing all her expectations away, chewing on her tongue as Noatak comes into the kitchen. He wordlessly drops into the chair across from her and leans back, arms crossed, head tilted.

"I had a few words with your friends," he says, and slides the hunting knife across the table. It skitters to a stop, wobbling slightly, the tip of the blade flecked red-brown.

"The older one - the firebender - didn't talk until I tried the earthbender... such brotherly devotion is admirable. Stupid, but admirable."

What does he want her to say? Why is he telling her this? It just makes her sick. Whose blood is that?

"I didn't know you were so opposed to taking bending that you'd lie to me, so blatantly... I'm disappointed. But I've also come to understand that now is the proper time to tell you the truth, and maybe I should have done it long ago."

His eyes are empty, empty shallows of clouded water, pools of a still, lifeless sea. Just empty and full of nothing.

Korra waits - her answer is coming, her revelation; at last... she can feel it, it's about to break...

"You are the Avatar."

He says it but it doesn't really mean anything. The words vanish into the air like sand onto a beach. She laughs, because it's ridiculous, but the laughter doesn't fill his glassy, empty eyes.

"That's... that's really not funny, Dad..." she says, wiping her face with her palm, streaking dampness from her eyes, "okay. Tell me, for real this time."

"You're the Avatar."

Korra chokes on her laughter and shakes her head at him, biting on her grin... but he's not...

"Bullshit," she says, and he merely quirks his eyebrows and she stops smiling and everything drops out, everything she understands just leaves, spills out, rushes away and she is hollow, there is nothing she knows inside of her. Nothing but the great silver sea of his gaze.

"You're..." she begins, but he's not lying, not with a sigh like that, a thin huff of air as his iron grey expression collapses. And Korra knows he's not, because she is the Avatar and it makes such perfect, flawless sense... This is his hard, sun-forged obsidian truth that cuts and bleeds her soul out, and he waited so long to draw it - and she stands up, fists thudding onto the table -

"Sit down. I'm not done," he says.

"Oh, I think you are," she snarls, suddenly furious, but it's different from before, it hurts so much more - the _Avatar -_ it twists all her nerves and she wants to strike him, she wants to shatter and wrench apart and tear through him and find the answers, all of them and _why doesn't he ever tell her anything?_

"You are going to sit down and listen!" Noatak thunders, rage coursing through him, through his patience; and almost immediately he settles back into glassy calm. Korra sits down, slowly, and clasps her hands in front of her.

"Yes, Dad. Tell me," she says, and her mouth is cotton-dry on hot bitterness.

Noatak is quiet for a very long time, and she just smiles at him, a faithful, obedient daughter, lips curved in plastic niceness. He can't surprise her anymore, he can't - anything he says now will be dull and pale compared to the sharp stab of being the Avatar.

"You are the firebender who killed your mother," he says, "it was an accident. You lost control. But... it was you."

The chair clatters to the floor.

Korra staggers to the basin, throws up, throws up all the sticky, bittersweet bile, she would turn herself inside out and throw out all of that too. She doesn't want it, she doesn't want anything she has ever been or ever felt; and she hugs herself, doubles over, and retches again and again until the only thing left is - the only thing bending brings is suffering and Korra is the Avatar and the Avatar is bending and it's her fault, bending is suffering…

Noatak pulls her away from the basin and she flails at him, catching his wrist, forcing his fingers onto her forehead - she's crying, babbling nonsense, she can't stand it, she can't stand _anything_-

"Take it," she yells, "take the bending away. _Now_. I don't want it! I don't want it anymore!"

"No, Korra - "

"TAKE IT AWAY! DO IT!" Korra shouts, and it's the only thing that makes any sense right now, and when he won't she hits him in the chest, pounding on him with boneless, helpless desperation - he won't take it, why won't he take it? Why won't he take it away?!

And Noatak just holds his hands out, away from her, until she loses herself entirely and collapses, sobbing into him, sobbing because she doesn't know what else to do and there is nothing left to do but cry because it's her fault, it's all her fault Mom is dead and he's miserable and she... and he murmurs something that she doesn't quite hear and holds her as she hiccups and chokes on her guilt, her shame, she's the _Avatar_...

* * *

a/n: really though it can only get happier from here on out, right? ugh korra i'm sorry about this AU. reviews + constructive criticism are greatly appreciated! (you know what would make my day? if my review count broke 40. nudge nudge wink wink.) random writing updates and story notes are published over at pulpofiction dot tumblr dot com.


	5. Dreams, Decisions

**A/N: **AAAH thank you for the reviews and the favorites and the follows and ajdkfh just thank you :D here's your update. this is the longest chapter, outstripping the others by about 3,000 words, and my favorite one _so far_. chock-full of noatak. enjoy it!

* * *

**I. DREAMS**

_Can I sleep with you_, Korra says, because she doesn't want to be alone with herself. And Noatak lets her curl up in his bed, tears streaming onto the pillow, and he wordlessly goes to fetch the great stuffed polar-bear dog that was bigger than her when he first bought it. And then he strokes her hair until she dreams, dreams wildly, hot firework dreams that explode and fizzle out in the darkness over her head. Korra dreams of her mother, the few things she remembers - a lullaby, and sometimes a laugh; a blanket, slender brown hands and blue eyes that ache with familiarity because they're her own, they're hers.

And then - and then Korra dreams again, but it's not a normal dream, it's the other kind of dream… someone else's dreams, the person with the blue sky tattooed on their hands. She knows because even asleep, she feels love towards the man with the scar flaring over his eye, a colonnade rising behind him, red and gold and vivid against a distant jagged rim of mountains. She doesn't know him but she _does_, she has seen him at his worst and at his best… and in bronze, oddly enough. He is tall and proud and wears conviction like he wears his gold and black robes, naturally and confidently; and he looks at her, or the _other_ her, like a friend. And he is talking about his father. Or her father? There is something about the way he struggles through the phrase 'my father' - he clenches his mouth around the phrase, traps and controls it as it prowls from his voice. _My father_- and he talks about the way he set himself free, from - from anger.

And Korra wants to ask him how its done, but Tenchu is there, Tenchu who laughs and laughs and laughs at her, with the sun behind her eyes bright and unblinking, and they bore into her soul relentlessly until they burn her awake.

The midnight hour is grey and motionless and Noatak is asleep next to her, his hand still in her hair. His fingers slip through the strands, snag on a loose knot, and drop free when she lifts her head. In sleep all of his hard edges slacken, like an oak becoming a willow: the rigid stentorian charisma fades into self-assured grace, and his muscles roll with easy strength under each movement. He's still fully clothed, lying on his side on top of the covers, hair fanned across the mattress; only his face is still stern and rough, deep in thought even in his dreams. But the cut of his mouth is relaxed.

Korra wonders what he was like before she was born, or before Mom died; all she really knows is that Equalism is just as old as she is and that he ran away from home when he was fourteen. There's an uncle somewhere he doesn't talk about, a master's degree in political theory from Republic City University in his desk, a desolate wasteland of silence when she asks about grandparents. And she wonders - how did Mom fall in love with him? Did they hold hands when they walked down the promenade by the harbor? Did they dance in the Central City plaza, on the cobblestones and street jazz? Did she watch over his shoulder as he wrote his dissertations and speeches, admiring the fine lines of his handwriting and the shift of bone in his fingers, and did they speak their own language, did they speak fleeting looks and stolen kisses and sly smiles he carried for her, only for her, bouquets of flowers only she could see, brimming with the color and perfume of love? How did they love each other? Quietly? Passionately? With quiet words and glancing touches?

Korra draws her knees up, leans onto them and sighs. It was a traditional Water Tribe burial, apparently; her body on a boat and then released on the sea, with prayers and blessings painted in white from bow to stern. She has seen the boats before, on the harbor; stoic men and women on the docks setting them adrift, sending their grief away with calm, full-body motions, like they were underwater. The boats drift out onto the open ocean and the waterbenders always leave before they vanish behind the curve of the horizon, blue boat on blue seas under blue skies. They trust the ocean with their dead.

Did her mother care that her daughter was the Avatar? Did she have her own mask? Did she stand on a stage with a microphone and hold an audience captive with an unchained voice, weaving them all into her tapestry of oppression and equality; did she want to be free? Two young revolutionaries and their daughter. Two young parents and their Avatar.

They were too poor for photographs, Noatak told Korra once, and besides, he sees her everyday, when he looks at Korra. He fell in love again, didn't he… but not with another woman, someone to keep him warm at night and thaw what had frozen. He fell in love with the movement.

The window is open and the street below is quiet. Korra feels the crisp bite of cold air on her neck and she lies back down, huddling into the blankets, moving his hand so that his arm lies heavily across her waist. She likes the weight. It's comforting. But in the morning, she thinks - in the morning she will make him tell her things. Somehow.

And as she slips back into sleep, hoping not to dream anymore, he moves from her waist and his hand finds hers, warm and dry. He uncurls her fingers and holds tight and her thoughts flutter awake, for a soft sigh of a moment, to realize that he is awake too.

She follows the sound of his voice and running water to wakefulness; he is singing in the kitchen. It's mid-morning and Korra turns over, blinking the sleep from her body, with the warm twinge of sadness that comes from falling asleep together and waking up alone. Last night's anger settles into her, slowly, the build of a snowbank as it falls white and cold. Noatak never told her anything. He kept quiet for fourteen long years, letting her self-loathing entrench itself, roots squirming deep and wide into the earth -

"Okay, why?!" Korra says, flinging herself into the kitchen chair, and crossing her arms, interrupting the second verse of _Summer Rain in Ba Sing Se._

"Good morning," he says firmly, placing a steaming bowl of congee, pocked with red dates and browned with rock sugar, in front of her, and her scowl flickers as a staggering, twisting hunger hits her. And there is a mug of oolong tea, just the way she likes it - but she will not be deflected by food.

"Why didn't you tell me before? How come I had to find out by... by freaking out?!" she says, loudly. She follows him with her eyes as he turns back to the stove, twisting the knobs; the petals of blue flame under the pot wither and disappear.

He braces himself on the stove, hands out wide, the tenseness in his back strained under the cloth of his long-sleeved shirt. Korra understands now why silence whittles away on patience, why the distance between words fills with rage the longer it grows; she won't be _ignored_.

"Dad! _Why - didn't - you_- "

"I was afraid," he says quietly, and the words drop and drift like leaves from a tree in winter.

Korra licks the taste of unfinished words from her lips as he ladles congee into his bowl and leans against the countertop. His gaze flicks to her and then back to his food, and the quiet billows in the clear morning air.

"That," he says, "is why I didn't tell you. The _Avatar_- the most powerful being the world has ever known! Tch."

He snorts and taps his spoon forcefully against the rim of the bowl, punctuating with a metallic ding.

"I wanted to wait until you were ready. I wanted to wait until you could understand, well and truly _understand_, your potential, your abilities, your great and unchallenged power - the power to burn the world on a whim and drown what is left. Bury it or scatter it all to dust because it pleases you. Pluck life like fruit from a vine and squeeze it in your hands so that it bursts and bleeds, but it means nothing to the Avatar. A being wholly outside mere mortality and human consequences. And that - _that_was to be your destiny," Noatak says.

His voice soars, broad wings on a bitter wind, over an ocean of fury and deepwater currents of vision; and a cold, shaking chill skitters through Korra. She sees herself on high, high over the city, calling waves of fire to howl down from the mountains and consume, swallow whole - and fear steals into her. She can _do_that. The pressure of her hands comes to her, suddenly; gripped tightly as they are around her arms, and she's afraid to open them. It's all in her hands.

They look at each other. Noatak nods at her bowl of congee.

"When you were three, after - " he stops, and starts again - "afterwards, you refused to eat anything I made. Not a single bite. Not sea prunes or congee or noodles, not five-flavor soup or moon cakes. Nothing. It was… endlessly frustrating."

He smiles, a wearied line drawn between the past and the present, and begins to eat. Korra can't help it, but she has to know; and the question swells on her tongue until it pops open past her lips.

"Were you… mad at me?"

Noatak lets the question age and ripen, testing its flavor; she can see him fiddling with it in his mind. He will peel it back, find the hard pit hidden in the sticky flesh; he knows the questions she's really asking.

"No, Korra," he says heavily, answering them all.

And Korra nods, uncrosses her arms, takes a spoonful of the congee and eats. _No _pools through her like a rising tide and it washes over the burning need to rebuff, which lingers as a careful hiss of steam. They finish the rest of their breakfast in relative peace and she is draining the last of her tea when he takes her bowl, plunks it into the basin and leans both hands onto the table, wearing a rare look of _guess-what _enthusiasm. She raises her eyebrows.

"What?" she says, bringing the empty mug down with a clunk.

"I'm taking you to the zoo," he says, and grins at her baffled face.

_What_ _the fuck._

* * *

He doesn't tell her why and finally she decides to go along with it; she'd rather humor him in enthusiasm than any other mood. The Republic City metro is always empty mid-morning, people slouching into their seats, solid and quiet like a child's forgotten marbles; sparse blots of color on the polished brown surfaces and wooden benches. Sometimes it goes underground, the lights scuffing against the tunnels as they close over the metro-cars. And sometimes it breaks into the sunlight on elevated rails, the tiled, scalloped rooftops and their squat brick chimneys slipping by in arrhythmia to the steady _chun-chun_of the wheels trundling on the tracks. Noatak sits, taking up space with wide legs and one arm across the back of the seat bench. Korra stands, both hands on one dangling hold, cheek pressed into her upraised arm. The metal hold is chafing on her fingers but she can look at the city better this way, gleaming windows and colorful clotheslines and winding streets, pretty things strewn across a beach, hidden in the sand. And - when the wall of skyscrapers breaks - in the distance, the statue of the Avatar.

The Avatar's city. _Hers_, apparently; but bending is impurity, bending is suffering… Bending, the cause of every war and every conflict in history. She steals a look at her father. He notices and smiles, but her resentment is not yet beginning to stale. _Bending is evil and you are the Avatar._The way he talked about the Avatar hypnotized her with images of terrifying, seductive destruction. Her trepidation collects, like beads of rain, running down a leaf - it will soon drop and break on its own weight.

The metro passes through and stops in Central City Station and as it pulls away, gathering speed, Korra sees a figure in bronze over the rooftops. Her heart skips - it's the scarred man from her dream, lifting a flame in an open hand, cast in sunlit bronze and morning shadows. She looks over her shoulder as it begins to shrink in slow sequence, smaller between each gap in the rooftops, and Noatak turns his head too.

"Fire Lord Zuko," he drawls, turning back to her, thumbing his nose in an offhand gesture; "useless old fool."

Korra purses her lips and stares at his feet, the dulled black engineer boots. He should've told her sooner. Where are Mako and Bolin? This is all their fault. She wants it to be their fault. There was blood on that knife and it was all because of her.

The zoo is a block away from the metro station and they stand under the gateway, tickets in hand, shoulder to shoulder. Korra scowls, sticking out her bottom lip; he still hasn't explained what they're doing at the damn zoo. It's almost as empty as the metro, with scattered clumps of rowdy primary students and their hassled teachers, trying to shush them with as much effect as a breeze on a flock of multi-colored crows, and tourists from out-of-city, conspicuously foreign by their traditional clothing and the occasional slip from relaxed attitudes into wariness: _don't you know there are terrorists in Republic City?_

"Are you gonna tell me what we're doing here? Is this a new training exercise or something?" Korra asks, shoving her hands into her pockets, stiff over her hips; whatever it is, she refuses to enjoy it.

"No. Every Avatar has a spirit animal, and I'd like you to find yours," he says. She starts and glowers at him, her surprise narrowing into suspicion.

"I don't want to," Korra says; she doesn't want to be _more_Avatar than she already is. It feels bad already.

Noatak laughs under his breath and pushes her, one hand on the small of her back; and when she stumbles two steps forward and just stands there he plucks a zoo map from a nearby box and holds it out.

"Just do it," he says, and she sighs, taking the map.

"So do I have some kind of special Avatar spirit-animal sensing power? How will I know?" Korra asks, unfolding it; the zoo is an amorphous blob divided into four regions, one for each nation. He shrugs and tosses a nonchalant hand.

So her Equalist anti-bending revolutionary of a father wants her to find the super special magical Avatar spirit animal. It makes _perfect_sense. Korra scans the map and studies the list of animals in each region… the Air Nomad animals are out of the question because she's never been able to airbend, she has no idea why… she casts a skeptical eye over the Earth Kingdom region. Things that like dirt. Nothing looks particularly inspiring. And then there's the Fire Nation, everything there is fangy and rabid or it's the turtle-duck petting zoo; and last the Water Tribe animals but she can't imagine any of them happy, trapped here in the city, with its sweaty muggy summers and ashy winter snowfalls.

"Okay, I choose the saber-tooth moose lion," she says, re-folding the map and slapping it onto Noatak's chest.

"Korra - " Noatak says, his voice dropping into warning tones, and he cuts himself off with a huff.

"Korra, it would make me very happy if you would do this. Please."

And now he's earnest and warm and Korra feels her soul sigh with deep weariness. But she relents.

"Fine," she says, "but I don't think... I don't need the map."

And he tilts his head back curiously, taking a small step away. She closes her eyes and stands stock-still, letting the noise of the zoo overwhelm the rest of her senses; the squawks, the belligerent yelps, the low mournful keening. There is a dry streaky shriek from close by and she winces away from it and thinks - _spirit animal. Find the Avatar's spirit animal_. She can sense him, waiting next to her, the tenseness of his patience.

… and Korra sinks beneath the sound; it closes over her completely, like… water. She has water in her blood, in her eyes. She can feel the call of water, more than any other element, in her bones - even now, as greasy streams in the gutters, sweat on a stranger's brow, the sweet juices of a ripened fruit. She can read her name written in the currents of rivers and in the curve of waves rolling across the open sea, like water calls to her, reaches for her, shimmers with the cool, flowing desire to - to _embrace_her. And now she knows why it calls to her …

It could only be a Water Tribe animal.

"Water Tribe," Korra says confidently, and he hums in approval.

They meander idly through the Water Tribe region, drifting from exhibit to enclosure, reading the plaques, and she almost forgets herself, wandering around the zoo with her father. It's too normal for them, too mundane; they haven't done anything like this since he tied the mask to her for the first time, when she was twelve, and it eclipsed her totally. He knotted the ribbon ties behind her head and the mask set like the sun in dusk on her face, on her childhood, on _Korra_. The eve of Tenchu.

Noatak buys dango rolled in sesame seeds from a dilapidated cart tended by a stringy old vendor and they eat them slowly, savoring the sweetness and the crunch. Korra spears the last one with her toothpick and pops it into her mouth as he stays a few moments by the wolves, watching them sleep, draped over each other with half-open jaws and lolling tongues. She can feel that it's not the wolf, but she waits because something shifts as he stands there; like his shadow changes, or something lets go of him. His tight lines are suddenly slack and the slate chips in his eyes smooth into beach glass, brushed into soft grey with the relentless wash of years.

"Not the wolf?" Noatak asks hopefully, turning to her, one hand on a bar of the enclosure, and she shakes her head.

"I was more inspired by the penguin seals," Korra says, and he laughs, eyes sharpening again, and they wander off.

Just past the wolves there is a large enclosure with a moat curled around it, and a tall cast-iron fence casting weak striped shadows across the pavement. Korra walks up to it, wrapping her hands around the bars, watching a leaf stuck to the surface of the stagnant brown water; whatever animal is in there is hidden in the concrete hut, away from the sun. Noatak stands next to her and puts his hand through the bars, waving it slightly; the leaf twitches and begins to drift, the scummy stains on the water breaking apart.

"Did you just - ?"

"Yes," he says, as though it doesn't mean anything, but she never sees him bend for pleasure. He tucks his hands behind his back and reads the plaque soldered to the bars, lined in a dull bronze.

"_Southern Polar Bear Dog_- oh, like your stuffed dog... This large and intimidating predator is rarely seen but lives in Water Tribe tales as Ikkumaaluk Nanuk, the Great Bear, and its legendary reputation for fierceness is well-deserved... it's a female, named Naga. You can barely see her, there."

He peers through the bars. Korra stands on tip-toe and cranes her neck, trying to see inside the hut, where there is a vague white mass curled up against the wall, lying still.

"Hey, polar bear dog, you wanna come out?" she calls, and the white mass doesn't move. She feels kind of ridiculous; at least the buffalo yak took grass when she offered it.

Her feet go flat again and she rests her forehead on the bars. Dumb polar bear dog.

"You know, polar bear dog, it would really help if you could just come out for a few seconds so I could see you," she mutters under her breath, "I already don't know what I'm doing. Like, at _all_."

The white mass rolls over apathetically and she sees the gleam of a shiny black eye, a flicker of a star in the dull dusty shadows of the hut. Naga rises to her massive, shaggy feet and stretches, leaning back on her haunches; her huge fluffy tail stiff like a spray of white ice, making a long keening whine that wavers between high and low. And then she pads out of the hut to the edge of the enclosure and smacks her jaws at Korra, sleepily, from across the moat, as though to say, _what do you want?_

"I wanna talk to you," Korra breathes, and she lets go of the bars.

"Dad? Help me out?" she says, taking a several wide steps back, and then a few more, until there is a long, empty stretch of pavement between her and the enclosure. Noatak looks at her questioningly and then he swings his head around and drops to one knee, holding out his locked-together hands.

Korra sprints towards him. He lifts as she leaps forward, vaulting her over the enclosure gate. She somersaults into the moat, landing with a heavy splash, and her ribs twinge sharply on the impact. She treads through the water to the steep enclosure slope, scrabbling up, dripping wet. Noatak rises quickly and posts himself, casually; watching for zookeepers or the overly curious. He takes a slim silver tobacco case out of his pocket, embossed with red, and deftly rolls a cigarette. She recognizes it as a gift from the Lieutenant and the wolves draw Noatak's gaze again, a thin thread of smoke uncurling lazily from the tip of the cigarette as it ashes.

Naga the polar bear dog is regarding her with immense suspicion, and Korra holds out her open hands, palm upwards, inching a few careful steps closer.

"Hey, I just want to know if you're... the Avatar's spirit animal," Korra says, hesitantly; Naga is big and towering and her creamy fur can't hide the slabs of muscle on her shoulders, her back, her flanks. _A legendary reputation for fierceness_. She snorts wet air through her furry lips and sniffs Korra's outstretched hand, her damp nose twitching; and then Korra's breath hitches as Naga goes _tchap tchap_ with her jaws, revealing sleek, yellow fangs and a gaping pink mouth, mottled with black.

Korra freezes as Naga sniffs Korra's head, her nose snuffling into her hair, her ear; and it's kind of ticklish and Korra tries not to giggle, afraid that Naga will startle and bite or chomp or worse. And then Naga licks the side of her face with a rough, moist tongue the size of a dictionary and Korra laughs because she's covered with polar bear dog spit and the white tail is _whuffing_ back and forth with a simple happiness. And the legendary fierce predator settles to her haunches, looking at Korra with big, dark eyes like she is a bridge across the moat over the fence and out of this tedious enclosure and all the way back to the South Pole where there is space and snow and freedom. And Korra knows, like she knows her heart beats, her blood flows, her dreams bloom quietly - Naga is her spirit animal.

Korra reaches out, tentatively, and rubs Naga's snout, the soft downy fur; the polar bear dog tilts her head into Korra's touch with a happy whine. Korra wonders if Naga is lonely, in the zoo, or if she misses the poles; if the seal penguin dropped into the enclosure every day tastes different from the seal penguin in the wild, if Korra is the first human being to rub her nose or scratch behind her ears or give it all up and bury their head in Naga's fur, hugging her, inhaling the musty muskiness.

"I wish I could get you out of here," Korra says, the fur riffling under her breath, and Naga whines again, a mournful rumble deep in her throat. _Me too_. It burns through her slowly, coolly; and Korra is full of the cold sadness of distance from a dying fire. She is afraid.

* * *

They get kicked out of the zoo and so they stand in the metro station platform, waiting; Noatak's cigarette long smoked off, her wet clothes still sucked to her body. And he takes the moment to teach her - how to sling the water away, how to feel for it and fan her fingers across her body and then twist, gently but firmly.

Korra bends the water away, a glassy clear ribbon unfurling from the fabric and dropping to the ground, and crosses her arms; and then she hides her face in his chest.

"Dad," she mumbles, "I wanted them to teach me bending. The benders, I mean. Mako and Bolin. That's why I didn't take their bending."

"I know," he says, hands light just on her arms, just under her shoulders.

"And I really wanted to learn bending. I really, really did."

"I know that, too."

Her confusion is welling up hot and fast in her throat, thick and curdling; and she feels tight around the eyes.

"But then you told me about Mom and I'm _sorry_ and now I don't really want to bend anymore, like at _all_ - "

Noatak pushes her away, gripping her tightly, and he is a thunderhead, the way he swells and fills the slowly wintering air. She sniffs and there are warm, wet blots in her vision; she blinks and they cling to her eyelashes.

"You must," he says, "or you will never master your powers. I see that _that_ is essential now."

"But - "

"But nothing," he says, cupping her face in both hands; "you are the Avatar. People of our kind - benders - we have misused our powers. We have lost touch with what we have been given and so disturbed the balance of the world; tilted it in favor of cruelty and oppression. We are instruments of petty violence, nothing more. Benders have escaped justice for far too long… but you - you, Korra; you can bring it to this city, with your powers. This is my hope for you. And, _Avatar_…"

Noatak locks with her, holding her gaze with an iron will, and there on the metro station platform she knows nothing but his voice though the city breathes and rises around her, brimming full of life and color. This is what they must feel like, the people, the crowds, when the storm breaks on stage -

"…you can redeem yourself."

**II**.** DECISIONS/**_muladhara_

There are very few times when Korra likes being Tenchu; almost all of them are chi-blocking class. Teaching quells her, settles the ground under her feet - showing someone how to block a firebender using nothing but the strength of their own fist and the willpower to stand up for themselves, showing them how to take their safety, their dignity, their self-determination back - she likes teaching class. She could've left it a while ago, left it to a lower rank, but it was way better than sitting in a dim room with blueprints and specs while her father drafted strategy and the Lieutenant rolled his eyes at all her comments. And Korra loved the looks on her students' faces, especially the first-timers, when she walked in, hands on her hips, in a black shirt and Equalist pants and her mask: _I'm Tenchu, and I'm gonna teach you how to chi-block._She always made a point of literally flooring the skeptical ones, just a 'demonstration...'

And, in the week since the zoo, she had been pronounced Public Enemy Number Two, which her class thought hilarious. Korra wasn't so sure. Now she was Avatar Korra, First-Rank Equalist Tenchu Public Enemy Number Two. Too many names.

The bookstore cellar is spacious and brightly-lit and a bit drafty; with a hole high up on the wall letting in inchoate winter from the street. Her students, paired off and sparring, all look as tired as she feels, but at least they're lively and excited over the thrill of late-night chi-blocking classes balanced on the tip of legal, her motley crew of students. Most likely, none of them had been woken up every night for the past week at some random midnight hour, pulled out of bed and forced to do pushups until Noatak said 'stop.' Twice on Tuesday and _three_ times on Thursday and on Friday night he woke her up so many times that she just slept on the floor in between sets, fuck it. _Do not lie to me ever again. Yes, Dad.  
_  
She strolls around the room, fixing stances, demonstrating punches, and stops to correct Daoming, a petite, shrewd university student; what she lacked in size she made up in sheer eagerness.

"Okay, watch me, and watch how I follow through with my heel. You can't hesitate, you have to just take it all the way - " she nods at Kinalik, a muscled leathery dockworker, and he mimics a bending motion - she taps him lightly on a block point right under the ribs and looks at Daoming.

"I think I got it, Tenchu, lemme try..."

Daoming takes up her stance and lances out enthusiastically with her fist, hitting the same block point with a loud slap. Kinalik staggers backwards and laughs, clutching his side.

"Spirits, woman," he gasps, "I'm not a bender, you don't have to beat me up."

Daoming grins and sticks her tongue out. She was the best of this particular class, and Korra had seen a bright spark of zeal behind her confident, dimpled smile. It would be sad when she had to graduate her to a higher rank, hide it all under a brown cowl and goggles tinted green.

"Save it for some bender jerk," Korra says, and leaves Daoming making a smug non-apology to Kinalik. She moves to Shien, makes him trace chi meridians down his partner's front; he's the oldest one in the class and had quietly and shyly shown up only two weeks before, clutching an Equalist pamphlet.

"No, no, this is the fire meridian, and that's the water meridian," she says, drawing the lines in the air, and Shien fixes his glasses thoughtfully.

"And the earth meridian is here, right?" he asks softly, using two fingers to bolden the meridian. He was having trouble with an earthbender, she knew that much...

"Yeah, so if you target block points on the earth meridian, you can block earthbending much better..."

She trails off as the door to the cellar opens and a masked Equalist comes running towards her, a letter in hand.

"Tenchu!" she shouts, giving her a curt salute; "urgent telegrams from Amon!"

Korra rips it out of her grip before she finishes her sentence and unfolds it -

TARRLOK TASK FORCE RAID ON UNDISCLOSED CAMP IMMINENT STOP IF ATTACKED DO NOT ENGAGE TARRLOK STOP DARK MOON STOP DO NOT DO ANYTHING STUPID STOP

And she opens the other one: IF ARRESTED I WILL COME FOR YOU STOP

Of all the condescending things to say - !

The telegrams crumple together in her fist and her heartbeat doubles and crescendos in her breast. She can't panic in front of the class. Tenchu never panics. Does the Avatar panic? She puts her fingers into her mouth and whistles; everyone freezes, limbs askew in unfinished motion.

"Everyone, listen up. We might get raided by Councilman Tarrlok's task force sometime soon," Korra announces, "this isn't a drill. I want everyone to have a pair of gas canisters, you all know how to throw 'em; and to wear your handkerchiefs. The people in the hallway should be enough to hold them off, if they come, but if you don't want to risk getting arrested, this is your cue to leave."

She looks around at all of them, her voice ringing loudly in the silent cellar, the door swinging shut with a squeak as the masked Equalist runs off to resume her post. Daoming yanks her black and red Equalist handkerchief out of a back pocket and ties it around her face, covering her mouth and nose.

"I knew what I was getting into when I showed up," she says calmly, "I'm staying. Bring it on, Tarrlok. I didn't vote for that fuckhead anyway."

Kinalik nods to himself and takes out his handkerchief too, and they resume their sparring with gritted teeth and animated grunts of exertion. The rest of the class follows suit and Korra exhales a long breath, feeling slightly proud underneath the squirming, bubbling sense of panic. They all had their reasons to be here... She un-crumples the telegrams and reads them again, twice. So Tarrlok's a 'dark moon' - code for bloodbender, and he didn't need the full moon, at that... How did her father know that? Shit. And she wasn't to do anything stupid.

She wasn't going to get arrested. She was still pressed, still sore about the rally and everything after it; Korra wasn't going to give her father the satisfaction of having his expectations of failure met. _Ugh_.

Korra makes a face, chewing on her tongue, and she goes to her satchel, finds her knife, straps the sheath to her thigh. Just in case... and she starts walking a loop around the students again - if they got lucky, one of the other training camps would get raided, and she wouldn't have to make any difficult decisions -

A massive wave of water bursts from the hole in the wall, roaring with energy and force. It freezes with a splintery crack and before she knows it, three of her students are trapped in ice. Three armored officers follow it down, leaping forward and slamming students into the walls with dense bricks of earth - Kinalik manages to toss his gas canisters but a fourth armored officer stops their release with a clump of ice, and takes him down with a blunt punch of water to the face.

Korra leaps forward and punches the officer in the nose, following with a kick straight into the water chakra, the fleshy plane of muscle right under the navel - the officer flies backwards, doubled over, and sprawls out cold on the floor. Korra leaves him and as a metal cord whips around her wrist she grabs it and yanks and the metalbender at the other end stumbles into her reach - she slams her elbow into the soft spot between neck and shoulder and he drops like a rock, ha - Korra feels her anger sparking, catching, rising - an officer freezes Shien in ice and there is more than enough fuel to burn her rage and she launches herself, sinking both fists into his gut, not even bothering to block, and she kicks his legs out from under him - her remaining students are rallying, Daoming aiming a flawless hit to an officer's neck and shaking her hand as he slumps -

"Out the door! Go!" she yells, and Daoming and the other students sprint for the door - she's the only one left standing in the cellar, surrounded by benders, she counts five incapacitated students - and there's a firm, hard tug around her ankles and she slaps into the tiled floor, soaking wet.

"I'll take care of her, you go after the rest," says an oiled voice, and the officers take off. Korra rolls onto her back, looking for the waterbender, and it's Tarrlok.

_Fuck_.

Korra scrabbles to her feet, bracing herself, breathing hard through her nose. He's smiling eagerly... If his bloodbending's what she thinks it is, the only strategy is to take him by surprise... She could maybe - no. She couldn't risk it, she isn't ready...

"Looks like I got my front-page headline," Tarrlok smirks, and Korra barely dodges his knife-edged lance of ice and ducks forward under a second stab. One of her students stirs in the massive wall of ice and there are shouts from the tunnel, the sound of earthen thuds, spurts of fire, the twangy hiss of metal. She has to protect her students. They have to get out - this is unjust and unfair and they just wanted a fighting chance, to defend themselves -

She leaps and somersaults over a waterwhip, almost there - she darts under his outstretched arm and punches him in the side, landing three solid hits before he pivots and smacks her down with his arm - this isn't going well - She tumbles to the floor and stands up again, panting; Tarrlok pulls through the air with his unblocked arm and a slab of ice slams into her back and she stumbles forward, winded - out of the corner of her eye she sees Kinalik move and Tarrlok whips around and kicks water into his face, freezing around it -

No. _Not_her students.

Korra charges and jumps, rolls off her heel, bent knee out - it's clumsy but the hard part of the bone sinks straight into Tarrlok, right over his water chakra, and the water on Kinalik unfreezes as Tarrlok grunts and doubles over in pain. He drops to his knees and she backhands him across the face with her fist.

"Don't touch my students!" she yells, and his mouth is bleeding but he laughs, he laughs at her -

"You missed," he snarls, and uppercuts her in the jaw with a fist of water, brutal and efficient; she staggers and reels, lights popping in front of her eyes - this isn't going well at all - and then he is on her, fisting her shirt collar in both hands, lifting her like a doll, her toes barely scuffing the floor. And his face is so familiar, the way his expression twists with sleek, controlled rage, the ice and steel in his irises, the angry hiss of breath from between his clenched teeth...

"You're just a girl," Tarrlok says, almost mystified; "a child!"

He drops her and she lands and falls backwards, her elbow cracking loudly into the tiles, pain needles up her arm.

"I suggest you surrender," he says, waving his hands, and a huge column of water shrinks with an icy crackle into a spear of ice, hovering and angled into her chest. Korra crosses her eyes at the point, its edges catching and throwing light as it turns, barely a foot away. A film of sweat creeps between her mask and her skin, hot and clammy. Shit. Shit. Catch him by surprise. She was going to get arrested if she didn't do anything and her resentment would not stand for that - She needs to buy time, to think.

"You surrender," she spits; she can feel the presence of the water, hardened and crystalline, water changes so quickly...

"Surrender or I will use this," Tarrlok says, viciously, but he's faltering. She's just a _child_, right?

"You don't have the nerve, you coward," she says, as her options crumble away in her mind like dry sand - catch him by surprise, catch him by surprise, _don't do anything stupid_she knows what she has to do but she doesn't want to, she's afraid, what if she hurts another innocent person - why didn't he tell her earlier, she's untrained and unskilled and about to be skewered -

Tarrlok's eyes widen with rage and the spear of ice collapses with a splash all over her.

"What do you know about cowardice!" he snarls, and his hands twist and she seizes as her veins flood with a sharp, piercing iciness that writhes into her muscles and she cries out as he wrenches her into a kneeling position and there is a moist cracking squelch _shit shit shit _her heart beats an unnatural beat as her blood flows against her and her insides are crumpling, breaking with blistering cold pain.

He lets her go and she falls onto all fours, gasping for breath, her vision swimming and grey; a strong heat clears away the bloodbending all throughout her limbs. What did she know about cowardice? She almost laughs. She's too scared of herself to be scared of him, she can catch him by surprise, she's strong enough to do this on her own, if only she can prove it -

"You're under arrest," he says, from high above her, and she hears the click of handcuffs and he thinks he's won but she's had enough of this -

And something unknots deep in her spine and suddenly she can feel the vibrations of chi under her palms, the relentless hum of old, unbreakable threads, the earth will bend to her will if she is unafraid and so her mind clears of fear and this is the beginning of justice and she can redeem herself -

The floor buckles like cloth under her hands as she digs in and pulls. A sheet of earth tears out from under Tarrlok's feet and there is a massive shrill crunch as the tiles shatter and break wide and far across the floor, jagged and splintering. He stumbles backwards, nothing but shock in his expression, and Korra rises. She stomps her foot, firmly, immovably; the ground ripples forth, a rolling wave of chi and rock, and it bursts up under Tarrlok and he slams into the wall with a heavy metallic thud and slides in a feeble sprawl to the torn floor.

Korra is there before he can move and this time she doesn't miss - she sinks her foot into his sacrum, forcing a unrestrained yelp of pain from him, and his hands clench but he's blocked, well and truly blocked, there's no bloodbending anymore.

"How did you - "

"Shut up," she says, unsheathing her knife, pressing it to his neck; "hands on your head."

He does it, glaring at her; she doesn't care. She reaches out and fumbles for the handcuffs on his belt, cuffs him; it's a little awkward to do it with one hand, holding the knife in the other.

"What's under that mask?" Tarrlok says, "what kind of face are you hiding?"

He's trying to bait her and she snorts.

"That's my secret. Just like your little talent," she says scathingly, and as she locks the cuffs with a click, the officers walk in, hauling several of her students and a few masked Equalists before them in handcuffs and metal cords. In a flash Korra pulls Tarrlok away from the wall and stands behind him, keeping the knife keenly against his neck, pulling his head back with a fist bunched around his ponytails.

"Officers, melt that ice," she orders, as the officers stop dead, casting awed looks at Korra, at Tarrlok handcuffed in front of her.

"Don't do it - do as she says," Tarrlok chokes, as she presses harder, warningly; and the wall of ice melts away, her students washing loose in the flood of water and coughing as they gasp and clutch at the air.

"Uncuff everyone and cuff yourselves. Now," Korra says, and when they don't she twitches the knife and throws a flash of light across the room, so they can see it clearly.

The officers take the cuffs off all her students and Equalists and wordlessly cuff themselves, their faces hard and angry. Korra sees Daoming rub her wrists, her dark hair in disarray, a purple bruise blooming over her eye; and she grins.

"Class, why don't you demonstrate what you've learned today?"

"With pleasure," Daoming says, and she hits the nearest officer in the ribs, following through on her foot, a perfect block.

* * *

Korra keeps the knife on Tarrlok until all the officers are knocked cold and securely bound. All her students are long gone, Shien and Kinalik and the others who'd been trapped in the ice fully revived and helped out. The masked Equalist who brought her the telegram stays, waiting for orders; Korra sheathes her knife with satisfaction and Tarrlok rubs his neck, the cuffs clinking. His glare fits her like old clothing, familiar and worn, and all the threads are knitting together in her mind... The unknown uncle, dark moon bloodbending. No wonder Dad never talks about his brother. She chuckles under her breath.

"Telegraph my father. Tell him we were raided unsuccessfully, no casualties, no arrests. I have Councilman Tarrlok and his officers subdued and await orders," Korra says to the Equalist, and she nods.

"Also, tell him I picked flowers for Tarrlok, please? Thanks."

The newest code between them: she used bending. The Equalist runs off and she's alone with Tarrlok again. Her kick to the water chakra is still sticking, she must've hit him pretty hard.

"So it's true, then? Amon is your father?" Tarrlok asks, after several minutes of silence; he doesn't seem to know what to do with himself.

"Uh-huh," Korra says. His chit-chat doesn't interest her.

Tarrlok sits back on his heels, his hands in his lap. There is a drying drip of blood from the cut on his mouth, dark red on his brown skin.

"What kind of man raises his earthbender child to be an anti-bending terrorist?" he muses, and she jerks her head towards him, feeling the bitter swell of offense.

"I'm not a terrorist," she snaps, "And what does it matter that I'm young? The last Avatar was only twelve when he defeated the Fire Lord."

Tarrlok laughs humorlessly and she ignores it but she doesn't like it at all, she wants to shut him up, she hopes Amon's answer comes quickly and it says GAG HIM.

"But you're not the Avatar, now; are you?"

She purses her lips, her closed mouth flooding with words of denial, but the Equalist comes running back and hands Korra another telegram, her panting muffled through her cowl.

"It came almost immediately..."

EN ROUTE WITH UNIT TO TAKE OFFICERS AND TARRLOK STOP SEND FLOWERS TO COUNCIL STOP

She nods to the Equalist, dismissing her. And then Korra laughs out loud and Tarrlok narrows his eyes, suspicious and curious.

"He doesn't say whether he wants you dead or not. Anyway, here's your front-page headline..."

She holds the telegram out so he can see it and then sets it on fire, feeling a glorious rush of warmth in her fingertips, it feels so good to be unafraid, to feel herself beat in tandem with the fire. It flutters to the floor between them, shedding black flakes of paper, rimmed with glowing red. Equalist colors. It curls up on itself with a gasp of fire and ashes, leaving only a dusty scorch mark, and she fans her fingers: the water responds like an old friend, coiling silver clear around the charred black ashes and washing them away.

"But you're an Equalist! You're _Tenchu_!" he shouts, dampened with flecks of spit, his voice horrified.

"Deal with it," she says, and whips into his neck with the hard side of her palm; he slumps forward, unconscious, and she smirks.

"Nice to meet you, Uncle Tarrlok," she mutters, and stretches her shoulders, rolls her sore muscles. The days and weeks ahead sprawl before her, bright and clear like drops of morning dew full of sun... And in each one, she is the Avatar. The word shines brilliant and hot and righteous in her mind, a burning star on her tongue, a flame on a candle in a dark room. She would set them on fire with it.

* * *

A/N: wow tarrlok good job man shiny gold star for you for trying to arrest an angry, resentful avatar with daddy issues yeah NOPE KORRA SAYS CHECK PLEASE

alright, next chapter brings back Mako and Bolin, and Asami enters stage left. as usual, check my tumblr pulpofiction for story updates and other LoK tomfoolery, and leave me a review to let me know what you think! thank you!


	6. Brothers

**A/N: **Thaaaank you as usual to those who reviewed and favorited and followed, you make my day when I see your names in my email inbox. Constructive criticism is, as always, appreciated. UMM as for people asking questions about plot - i.e. Korra being evil, and such; I think it's safe to say that Korra is not evil but definitely, one-hundred percent being deliberately misguided. A warning about this chapter: there is a graphic description of a wound and a character who is briefly in a _very_ large amount of pain. So, thanks for reading, hope you like it, let me know what you think!

* * *

**I. BROTHERS**

The tunnel is wide and dark and the red shadows shift swiftly, soundlessly, over the Amon mask, breathless under the mechanical clicks of the elevator platform as it slides down the ramp. As they drop the air rushes into her hood, pooling rough and cool over her cheeks, her ears, fluttering her bangs; and Korra leans against the railing so that the bottom of the tunnel is behind her and she falls backwards into the draft.

"Twenty-six years?"

"Yes, Korra, twenty-six years."

He has both hands on the railing, watching the tunnel rise to meet him.

"You haven't talked to Tarrlok - your little brother, my uncle - no letters, no phone calls, nothing at all, in _twenty-six years_…" she says.

"I have no interest in revisiting the past. Do not press me any further," Amon says, turning his head; and his eyes catch the dim red light, the gleam fading in and out as the elevator descends. She can sense his chill irritation and crosses her arms against it. It was too early in the morning to annoy him, and the hours were all off their axes. They'd left before dawn for the Sato mansion in full uniform and after the initial blur of drowsy bleariness, she was vividly awake, her thoughts warm to the touch in the quiet white of an overcast winter morning.

She had to make sure it was twenty-six years and not anything else. In her deeper, fainter dreams, the ones that drag the last flashing glint of sunlight with them into the depths below her waking hours, there is another man, someone big and tall and safe, someone who holds her close and speaks to her with a rumbling affection, and she thought that maybe - maybe it had been Uncle Tarrlok visiting his baby niece, before everything went… _wrong_. But Uncle Tarrlok had also been unceremoniously ditched on the steps of City Hall for the council to find yesterday morning, with his bending intact. No martyrs, Amon had said, not yet. She wants to ask about the man, know if he's real or just some dreamy fleck of light, playing across an ocean of things to forget; but Amon is bristling with ice, knuckles gripped in strong angles on the railing, and she won't press him into a mood.

And there had been no front-page headline.

The platform squeals down another several dozen yards and Korra watches it slurp the rails like some big mechanical monster, a metal-devouring spirit with a dull headlamp eye and square toothless mouth.

"But… that's why your impression of him is so good," Korra offers, and she ventures a nudge to his arm. He startles loose and gives a short laugh and clears his throat for the right chords.

"We must… restore the city to its former glory as a shining, glorious beacon of harmony and unity, with good will to all - except, of course, Tenzin, you bald bat," he blusters, his voice full of Tarrlok's spaciously high and oily tones, and Korra snickers; "vote for me and I will personally catch every single spider rat that plagues your homes, good citizens of Republic City…"

The elevator platform grinds to a stop at the bottom of the tunnel and she feels the shudder of the gears right around her waist, pitching her forward. He steps off smoothly towards the door to the factory.

"Don't forget the box," Amon says, and Korra lifts the wooden crate that mutters with glass clunks and papery rustles. She moves towards the factory floor but stumbles over her feet as he turns to a different door, an unmarked panel in the wall that tilts up with a careful, firm press. The doorway gapes darkly onto a staircase that goes down, down, down, and then turns on itself and goes further down, and turns again…

"Is this where you've been going every morning?" she asks, as they start down the staircase, the wall falling shut with an echoing slam; and he hums a flat note in response as his boots tap down the honeycomb stair grating,_ chack chack chack chack._

At the bottom of the staircase, there is a door into a massive vaulted room, a square concrete bubble deep in the mountain. The heavy presence of the mountain weighs coolly in the air, lit with large bare lights.

"Wait here," Amon says, and Korra shrugs obediently. She sits on a crate as he crosses to one side of the room to a nondescript door and disappears. She rests her chin in her hands and waits, like she always does, for whatever he's going to do. Her mask is poorly tied from sleepy apathy, the ribbons tugging over the curve of her ears, the top edge scraping against her skin.

"Stupid mask," Korra mutters, undoing the crooked knot, her fingernails creasing the soft black cloth. She is caught in a quiet, restless point of suspension between alertness and exhaustion. She holds the mask out, tilting it up and down, its sharp petal eyes wide and alert and blank. Who defeated Tarrlok? Tenchu or the Avatar? It felt like the same thing, really, and Korra sighs. The little blue lotus on the forehead of the mask is fading a bit; she'll probably have to repaint it, lacquer and buff it shiny… why did her father choose that, anyway? She never bothered to ask.

The far door opens again and Amon is marching someone towards her, gripped tightly by the elbow. Exhaustion rolls off Mako like smoke as he walks, stumbling once between hopeless and sullen, his yellow eyes dim and flat. Only the red scarf is bright, looped around his neck; and there is still a stiff resistance in his movements as Amon pulls on Mako's arm, making him sit, cross-legged, several yards away from Korra, who has her mask back on in the space of a blink.

Amon is already turning on his heel; he vanishes into a different door on the opposite side of the room and Korra is alone with Mako.

The silence yawns wide and creeps silvery cold into her bones, winding around her serpentine and slow; Mako's eyes are on the floor and she can't read the words in the air, written with his slight breathing. He is threadbare, everywhere: from the softened tufts of unglued canvas edges on his shoes to the raised pale grey scars of rips and tears scored small across the wrinkles of the coat, and if she pulls on his tight black thread mouth, will his expression unravel, all the stitching splitting apart, all the ends loose and tangling?

His gaze flicks to her, briefly, and then goes out; a quiet glimpse of an ember in charcoal. He must be chi-blocked. There are words, sticky and tasteless, on her tongue; Korra swallows them. He is a prisoner just like Bolin was and she will not be as weak as she was with Bolin.

But the silence plummets as Mako opens his mouth, his voice hoarse and unused and shot through with an unyielding anger.

"Tell me where my brother is."

"He went to go get him," Korra says, lifting her arm and pointing to the far door, the second one, and Mako reels in a slow breath and drops his face into his hands.

"Tell me where my brother is," he mutters, and this time it sounds like a mantra, an unfinished plea, a murmur of a prayer written on a broken sigh.

Korra feels a squirming, swelling discomfort pushing out from inside her. Mako's lines crimp up on themselves, elbows pressed into his thighs, gloved hands chunked in black cloth over his expression. Bowed over and hidden in himself, infantile, _no one can see you if you can't see nothin'_. How long were they down here? Inside the mountain, by themselves, visited only by Amon? A queasy guilt settles into her throat.

"I have food for you," she says swiftly, standing up and feeling for the wooden edge of the lid -

"Do you know…" he says, into his hands, and his voice is like breaking glass wrapped in cloth; "what's it's like to be alone in the dark, dreaming of things that aren't there and seeing people who aren't with you and they're telling you things you can't really hear? Do you? For nine solid days?"

Korra freezes over the crate, listens to his muffled voice, the sting of hopelessness piercing the break between each word, needling into the cracks and forcing them open. He's pulling out splinters with his teeth clenched over a sob.

And she does know how it feels. She does.

Korra pads over. His hand isn't broken anymore and she can see the roughness of his skin, the whorls spinning over the tips of his fingers, smeared by callouses and shiny flat scars. Firebender hands.

"Would you believe me if I said yes?" she asks, and he drops his hands and finally looks at her, his eyes caustic and flaring yellow; and then they flick to a point up behind her and she follows them with a glance. Tenchu is on a banner on the wall, the blue lines bearing down on them with an oppressive sleekness.

"Oh, that. Ugh," Korra snorts, jerking her head away, and Mako recoils slightly, defensively, his chest rising and his head tilting back - and suddenly she can't stand it, she can't stand the look on his face, his sick defeated fear of _her_.

So Korra starts with the mask, untying it and dropping it, looking at him. It clatters woodenly across the stone floor and she does the gauntlets and shin pads next, the leather stiff and creaky, and the skin on her forearms and hands feels fresh and bare in the cold air. And then the belt and the uniform - the belt going shff as she slides it off her waist and drops that; her fingers determined and nimble on each silver button as the uniform front curls down, like a wilting flower. She shrugs it off and it lands with a flump over the rest of her things and finally Korra is down to just her bulky pants and her sleeveless black shirt and no mask, none at all.

"So my real name," she says, drawing herself up; she is awake with the feeling of diving into untested waters, "is Korra, and I'm the Avatar. My spirit animal is a polar bear dog in a cage, and I kinda know what it feels like."

Mako opens his mouth, and shuts it. His tension is strung across his body, cutting deep through his narrow gaze, his broad chest hunched under the weight of uneasy grace and sharp-boned restraint. Korra sits on the floor in front of him, hands in her lap. She lets her words turn stale in the cold, dry air - he can take them if he wants.

He sits up straight and crosses his arms.

"I don't know whether to trust you or hate you," Mako says simply, honestly. She can't, won't blame him…

"But you let Bolin go. And then you didn't take our bending. And then you - you went all - I don't even know what you did but you didn't let him kill us."

"Yeah, I went all Avatar glowy-eyes," Korra adds, because he starts to - not relax, but shift, slowly return to life… and Mako takes a long breath, eyes widening slightly, like he can't believe he's saying it, but he lets go with a short huff and says it:

"You saved us, and for that, I guess, I should say 'thanks.'"

There is a long pause as the deep ache in his voice settles into her, and it stirs up so many things…

How do you say _don't mention it sorry about everything_to someone like this? Korra smiles at him and it flies onto him like sparks and catches as a blush of color on his face. Mako uncrosses his arms and tugs on his scarf with nervous energy, wringing the red out of its knit weave and ducking his head away from her gaze. He's embarrassed - ashamed? - of his own gratitude. But he means it, she thinks.

Korra drags the crate over between them, the air of casual heavy on her limbs and the upturn in her lips. And Mako keeps his hands politely, tightly on his scarf as she opens the box and finds a paper bag of steamed pork buns, dry and a little shiny with grease.

"Here, I'll warm it up if you're chi-blocked," she says, offering him a bun.

"Please," Mako says, his fingers twitching, and Korra lights a flame on her palm, passing it over and around the bun. He watches with transparent fascination and she remembers… firebending is like death, he said, and she kind of knows what that means now, and with a twinge of sadness Korra kills the fire in her fist, cold rushing in around her hand, routing the warmth.

"Not bad, for an Equalist," Mako says, taking the bun, and as he stuffs half into his mouth with a whole-hearted bite she sees the humor play on the corners of his eyes.

"I'll take that as a compliment, firebender boy," Korra says, and he smiles into his next bite and she wonders what he's like when he's with Bolin, in places not like this, with people not like her…

The door at the far end opens and now Amon has Bolin by one arm, the fire ferret clinging gamely to the other, and Korra scrabbles for her discarded clothing and jumps to her feet, strapping things back on, hands skipping over buttons. She fumbles with the mask ribbons and decides to skip it completely, fuck it, she doesn't wanna be Tenchu with them, and ties the mask to her belt. Amon forces Bolin to sit next to Mako and pauses, looking at Korra, his gaze thin from behind his own mask; and her heart skips a nervous beat. He stands next to her, both of them facing the boys, and Korra realizes that the strange fit of her gauntlets is because they're on the wrong arms just as Amon notices it too - and he rolls his eyes, giving her a swift, exasperated cuff on the back of the head.

"Ow," she mutters, but his attention is already gone, his stance already hardened into dense intimidation, feet apart, hands behind his back, the mouth of the mask quirked in fearless, feline satisfaction.

Mako and Bolin are wide-eyed and quiet, Bolin's hand surreptitiously pressed to the floor under Mako's. And Bolin is openly nervous, his round cheeks pink and drawn by the tight downwards tug of his mouth, his other hand pushing up tufts of fur on the ferret curled in his lap. But he looks better than Mako does, more lively; and there is nothing hidden in his straight and unguarded posture. Mako still has the pork bun in hand and he holds it out to Bolin, whose happy surprise at warm food glows clearly behind his eyes.

"Hi," Korra mouths silently, and snaps back into rigidity as Amon begins to speak.

"Gentlemen," he says, each syllable pointed and extended, the spoken claws of some predatory beast; "I take very little pleasure from seeing you here, a pair of useless bender scum. I have no idea why my daughter went spineless for you - "

Mako's face hardens and Bolin softens and Korra feels a needle sting of anger at her father - she had been never more iron-spined in her life, trying to stop their murder. And, entirely on a whim, like something giving her a firm, gentle shove, Korra interrupts.

"But the fact is that you're down here and we can't really let you go, so you're my, uh… under my care," she says, skipping over the word 'prisoners', looking from Mako to Bolin; and they strike her as almost odd - one is stark and brittle like he's been left out under the sun, the other is rich and loose like he's been buried in damp earthy loam. Their elements are completely stuck on them.

"Precisely," Amon huffs beside her, but she doesn't care to let him take back the lead.

Korra sits down again, scooting away from Amon and closer to the boys, and she claps her hands together and drops them into her lap.

"So, I'm the Avatar, and I was hoping you guys could teach me some stuff about bending," she says, with a measured cheerfulness, "because - uh - obviously I don't know that much, and I really don't want to lose control over it again."

Mako and Bolin consider each other, their eyes meeting warily; Bolin's mouth in a pout bunched small and hesitant, Mako with his chin up, his angled eyebrows furrowed together, bolding his skepticism. In the dim, spacious warehouse, they stand out with all the bright defiance of graffiti on a wall, vivacious sprays of color - Bolin's green lines bent and angular like a fistful of wild grass, Mako's dark red loops flat and vivid like the pressed petals of a dried flower. And then the ferret, still curled in Bolin's lap; it looks at her with dark, glittering eyes and a tweaky nose and she feels judged.

"This is not a request. The alternative is being taken back to your cells," Amon says from above them, his fingertips grazing her shoulder; "and left to rot."

Korra frowns up at him and clicks her tongue and tries to shrug him off, but he stays there, _overkill, Dad, so much overkill._If only he could tone it down, just a bit -

"Face it, you got nothing better to do, right?" Korra says, and Bolin chuckles lightly.

"Yeah, I mean, I guess so, and it's… awesome that you're the Avatar, but see… you're also an Equalist. So, uh. You probably won't use anything we'd teach you in a _good_way…?" he asks, carefully, peaking his fingers together under his nose, his brow quirked thoughtfully. And Mako crosses his arms and tilts his head, studies her.

Amon snorts, a short _tch_of disgust.

"What she uses her bending for will be none of your concern - "

Korra meets Mako's gaze and it's like he knows, he knows but she just has to tell him, sometimes she hears him say it in the quiet of her mind, _firebending is like carrying death around_, and then: _it was an accident, you are the firebender who killed your mother_-

"My mom died because of my own firebending," she says, and she says it to Mako, he'll understand; "it was an accident. So, like I said: I don't want to lose control of my bending again. I don't want to hurt any more innocent people."

This is the truth - at least, her truth; the cold air between her and Amon is filled with a ringing, dissonant silence, forced out by a sudden pressure from his hand on her shoulder. Mako's eyes are warm on her, a touch of sunlight breaking through her overcast; he rubs his arm absently and nods, more to himself than to anyone else.

"Excellent," Amon drawls, "now allow me to expand on a few terms… You will earn the privilege of keeping your bending every day, through hard work and her progress. My instructions are to be followed immediately and without question - "

"Wait, why?" Mako says suddenly, his expression narrowing, and Amon stops short.

"Why, what?" he answers, in a flat, clipped tone.

"Why are you letting us keep our bending? That doesn't make any sense," Mako says, his voice rising, cautious on the edge of daring.

Amon steps forward without hesitation and makes a fist around Mako's scarf and collar, yanks; drawing him up close and leaning in so that the mask looms wide and implacable over Mako's face. Korra swallows her protest and throws her hand, palm out, at Bolin, who tenses with the urge to move, to fight - _it's better if you don't_.

"Do you _want_me to take your bending?" Amon growls, and Mako flinches at the words but doesn't look away, breathing heavily, a feral anger tensed in his snarling mouth.

"No," he says, between gritted teeth, and Amon throws him back with a rough, careless shove, standing over him, the curving lines of his stance stiff and unyielding.

"People who have had their bending taken away are unable to teach it," Amon says, after a forceful sigh; "they lose all respect for it. But rest assured, your bending will not help you escape. Bending only brings pain. It cannot set people free."

Mako, in a half-sprawl on the floor, looks ready to challenge that idea; hands balled into fists, chest heaving, trying to burn Amon with a searing look of hatred. And Korra thinks of dogs, street dogs; the dirty, homeless mutts that stalk down alleyways on clicking paws, desperately hunting shadows that can't feed them and snarling over the gristle and crunchy bone splinters of someone's leftover dignity. The dead ones flatten, their bodies collapsing into hollows of coarse fur sagging across bony ridges, their tongues wilting over their yellow-black teeth; the ones left behind always look hungry, even after you toss them scraps. It's a different hunger, a wild hunger, a starved emptiness choking on hostility. No one cares about them.

But Bolin twists at the waist and leans over, his knees tilting out at unbalanced angles; and with a furtive glance at Amon, whispers into his brother's ear from behind his hand. His smile is quiet and sincere and Mako lets out a bark of laughter and sits up, dusting himself off with a resigned sweep of his palm.

"What?" Korra asks, confused, looking from one to the other, but Mako just bites his laughter into a glove, muffling it without success. Bolin rubs his hands, sheepish; his expression is full of the hazy pink glow of a red paper lantern.

"Well, sir," he says to Amon, cracking a grin, "even with all this Equalist stuff and scary threats, you know what? Of all the landlords we've ever had, you're _still_ not the worst."

* * *

The fire ferret slinks around them, curious and furry, sniffing at Korra with its paws on her knee as she takes things out of the box and hands them to Bolin and Mako - the bag of pork buns. A bag of ripe green pears, freckled with brown spots. A box that rattles thickly, shunk shunk, and Mako opens it; it's full of nuts - salty, uneven, pebbled blots of dark brown and beige. Bolin picks out a walnut and holds it out to the ferret, who takes it delicately in its teeth and then gnaws away with tiny bites, whiskers twitching.

"Does it have a name?" Korra asks, ghosting a hand over its head, and when it doesn't turn on her, she scratches behind its ears and it chitters happily.

"Pabu," Bolin says, "the finest fire ferret in all of Republic City. Found him behind a dumpster when I was eleven."

"I wanted to sell him," Mako adds affectionately, scuffing dirt off a pear with the side of his hand, watching as Pabu rolls over under Korra's hand so that she can rub his stomach.

"No, you wanted to _eat_him," Bolin says, with an offended tone, and Mako shrugs indifferently. Korra takes a handful of nuts and eats them one by one, the muffled damp crunch sounding loud in the hollow quiet, Pabu with his eyes closed blissfully as she strokes his downy fur. Amon is sitting on a crate several yards away, an ink-dusted newspaper folded on his knee; he's working on the sudoku, which she knows he won't finish. His pencil hissing scratchy on the cheap paper as he writes in numbers, crosses them out, tries again..

"I'm surprised he let you keep him," Mako says, through a mouthful of pear, in a low voice, and Bolin hums in agreement.

"Yeah, I think I would've gone nuts, waiting in there by myself. Pabu! Show Ten - uh, Korra what you can do, buddy," he says enthusiastically, leaning forward over his crossed legs to shake Pabu's upraised white paw, and Pabu opens his eyes with a righteous sort of annoyance.

"C'mon, just one trick."

And he gently picks up Pabu and sets him on his feet. Pabu shrinks down lazily, his limbs disappearing into his fur, only the edges of his paws visible under the fluff of rusty red. Korra lets out a laugh.

"He's not really interested in impressing me, is he," she says, running her fingers down his tail, and Pabu turns and scrambles up her arm, his claws dull through the fabric of her sleeve, and curls around her shoulders, snatching the last nut in her other hand from right in front of her mouth. His fur is feathery on her neck and she giggles, wincing away the ticklishness.

"Ha! There it is," Bolin says triumphantly, and helps himself to another pork bun.

"There what is?" Mako asks, as Korra bows forward, feeling Pabu heavy around her, and he clambers to the top of her head, balancing, his back paws pushing against the knot in her wolf-tail.

"Her smile, I got her to smile," Bolin says, and Korra feels heat flush under her eyes as she grins and claps her hand to her mouth. Amon clears his throat, once, punctuating his displeasure, but Korra ignores it as Pabu slips forward, pushing her bangs over her eyes, making a mess out of her hair. She dips her head and he topples off, rolling in her lap, catlike and lithe and warm; and Mako doesn't say anything, he just makes a noise in the back of his throat.

"You don't have to smile if you don't want to," Bolin says brightly, "I just think you could do with a few more things to smile about."

"Haha! Gosh, you're sweet," she says, and it's his turn to blush red, and she remembers that this is how it started, with Bolin being nice, Bolin being brave, Bolin treating her like a friend when he had no reason to be friendly.

"Makes my teeth hurt," Mako chortles, earning himself a swift punch in the arm, and he finishes his pear with a smirk, core and all, in three crisp, snapping bites.

"What about your parents?" she asks, and his lips purse over his fingers, sucking on the wet dribbling of pear juice - it distracts her from her own question.

"Gone," Bolin says, taking Pabu from Korra's lap, slinging him over his shoulder; "when I was six. I don't remember all that much about 'em."

"Mugged, by a firebender," Mako says, and there's a moment where he sniffs and rubs under his nose, brushing something away, some old feeling; "he cut them down right in front of me. I was eight."

The pencil stops, briefly, and scratches away again; the sound falls hard on her ear and Korra brushes it off, tucking and dragging on the ponytail there, she wishes Amon hadn't heard that. And now Mako makes more sense, now she can finally feel him, his lines resolving clear and precise - no wonder he was so desperate for Bolin, no wonder he attacked an Equalist rally, no wonder at the look in his eyes as he watches Bolin tear bits of bread off the pork bun. He wears it with unfelt devotion, as easy as breathing.

"I'm sorry," she says, and they both sigh with resignation and she gets it; it's not something they have the energy to feel all that much anymore.

Mako rests his elbow on Bolin's shoulder, tilting his brother down with his weight; they exchange a look that lasts a second too long and Bolin pushes him away, stretching, his knuckles popping high over his head. Pabu jumps off with a chirrupy squeak.

"I'm sorry, too," Mako says, with a sudden force -

He lunges forward and sweeps her up, rising to his feet, one arm strong and tight across her upper body, turning her around and pressing her to him - Bolin scrabbles to his feet and braces himself, fists out, his legs squared and tense over the ground - Korra's arm is pinned to her side by Mako's, his hand closed with a firm, painless grip over her opposite wrist - and he drags her with him as he takes several wide steps back, widening the distance between them and Amon - his outstretched hand is sizzling and lit with blue; sparking, jumping threads of lightning playing over the tips of his pointed fingers.

And Amon slowly tosses the newspaper aside and stands up and Korra, feeling Mako's chest rise and fall against her back - her heart sinks and it drops densely into her gut, sending a chill through her.

"This is a bad idea," she mutters, and Mako tightens his grip, a hot hiss of breath on the side of her face.

"We're getting out of here," he says fiercely, "we're leaving! Get out of the way and no one gets hurt!"

Amon waves his hand towards the door, a casual invitation, and Bolin's eyes dart there and back to Amon, disbelieving.

"What are you planning to do with her, take her as a hostage? I invite you to try," Amon says, his voice slick and amused; "she can be more trouble than she's worth."

And Korra is not remotely worried about herself, she doesn't care, she could break away in a dozen different ways in half as many seconds - but she's worried about them, she's seen this dance before, the way he wears people down, his icy cunning cutting into even the most solid and unchanging people. Freezes over them, finds the weak spots and cracks them open. And he's been listening this whole time - she doesn't want to go Avatar state again, lose control, and she takes a deep breath -

"Mako, you don't know what you're doing - "

"Yeah, I do, I'm getting my little brother out of here and away from _him_. And you shouldn't be here either, _Avatar Korra_," Mako growls, taking another step back, a thorny wire of lightning trailing and snapping from his hand.

At this, Amon laughs, a wild, harsh sound cascading dry and hard-edged, laughter drowned in contempt - he spreads his arms wide and drops them to his sides. Korra feels the blunt slap of each laugh and she's afraid for them, for Mako and Bolin.

"I'm not going to move, so you should do it," he says, and the way he slams down on the words, a vicious snap of air - Mako exhales once and catches his breath again - the door is right there, a dozen yards behind Amon -

"Do it, firebender," Amon says again, "_strike me._Use your lightning. You will learn exactly what I mean when I say bending brings pain."

"Hah - get out of the way!" Mako yells, and there is a heated panic in his shout, his knuckles white and tense around Korra's wrist, and Bolin takes a slow, cautious step towards the door.

"Dad, don't!" Korra yells - she can see his fingers rolling, splaying at his side, molding the air into a tangible threat of pain -

"Shut your mouth! He wants to escape; I won't begrudge him the chance. Do it now," Amon commands, in a ringing voice - she can disarm Mako, before anyone gets hurt - the Avatar state calls to her from a distant place, behind all her senses, between the beats of her thudding heart - no - Mako takes one more step back -

"_DO IT!_"

- and a huge bolt of lightning erupts from his fingertips, veiny and sharp, shedding needle points of white-blue electricity as it tears through the air - and Amon throws out his hand and Mako's arm twists away at an unnatural angle and he yells, clutching Korra to him, his two fingers now pointed at Bolin - the streak of lightning cracks through the air and Bolin screams as it hits him -

- and for an endless flashpoint of a second, barely a second - Bolin is screaming and screaming and screaming, white and hot as the lightning courses through him, rips and snarls through him on the knife-edge of Mako's own rage -

He collapses, slowly, with a sigh; drops bonelessly to the floor and twitches violently and Mako makes a sound that Korra has never heard before and never wants to hear again.

He lets go of her and sprints to Bolin, falls to his side, grabs his shoulders and shakes him, desperate and terrified -

"Bolin! _Bolin!_Wake up!" he yells, "Bo! Spirits, wake up, Bolin, open your eyes - "

Bolin's head rolls back and Mako slaps him across the face, a reckless, helpless gesture. There is a jagged burn seared onto the upper right of Bolin's chest, straight through the cloth of his jacket, a ring of shiny puffy skin around an angry gash full of mottled black-white rot.

" - wake _up_, Bolin, I'm sorry, wake up! Bo, _please_, I'm so sorry - "

But Bolin is unresponsive and lifeless, a body with a name. Korra hugs herself, she doesn't know what to do, she feels ill, she feels cold, she feels responsible - Mako moans in anguish and hugs Bolin to him, fumbling, trying to hold close as much as he can, and Bolin slouches limp in his embrace.

" - please, I'm _sorry_, don't leave me," Mako sobs, cradling him, and his voice breaks, shatters.

"Get him off," Amon says, unstrapping his gauntlets, rolling up his sleeves; "and restrain him."

Korra puts her hands on Mako's arms and tries to pull him off and he doesn't let go. He shrinks away with Bolin as Amon takes off his mask and sets it aside, kneels on the floor in front of them. She drags Mako from Bolin, twisting one arm behind his back and folding him over himself; and she pushes down as Noatak lays Bolin flat and tilts his chin back -

"_No!_" Mako shouts, heaving against Korra, "Don't touch him! Don't you dare - "

"Shut him up," Noatak says, with two fingers on Bolin's neck, his head hovering an inch over Bolin's open mouth. And Korra doesn't have the heart to do anything except get down and press him into her, hold him tightly in place, her palm curved around the back of his head and her uniform front soaking with his tears. He clings blindly to her, wraps an arm around her waist, and doesn't look at Bolin anymore _I'm sorry don't leave me I'm sorry_

Noatak's hands flutter over Bolin, skimming his clothing, searching, tracing... he stops over Bolin's heart and turns one hand palm up and squeezes the air, slowly, like testing the ripeness of a delicate fruit. And as he does it, Bolin seizes once, his back arching, his limbs going rigid - and he lies still.

"Please, I'll do anything," Mako begs, on splintered breaths, and Korra believes it.

Noatak snorts irritably and fans his other hand over Bolin and squeezes again, this time without getting the jerk of motion, and he does it one more time and nothing happens - and he pinches Bolin's nose between two fingers and covers his mouth with his own and Bolin's chest rises, fills with air - he does it twice, spares a glance at Mako, and squeezes the air again, slowly, carefully, the curl of his motion gentle and steady.

And then one more time -

- and Bolin coughs, and coughs again, his eyes blinking open. He rolls onto his side and chokes and gasps, struggling for breath and slapping the floor as he comes back to himself, and then Noatak puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him onto his back.

"Stay there, don't move," he orders, and he stands up and goes to the box of food, shuffles things around. Mako relaxes against Korra, releasing a long, stretched groan of relief onto her chest, and Korra sighs because she's relieved too - Bolin is fine, Bolin is alive. And Mako slips out of her arms and turns to Bolin on all fours, presses his forehead to Bolin's, says something but can't get any sound out of the words.

"Big bro - I love you, but next time, could you - could you fucking _warn_me?" Bolin murmurs feebly, lifting a hand to Mako's face. And Mako drops a hoarse sob of laughter and grabs it, taking it with him as Noatak comes back and waves him out of the way, holding a tall round canteen of water.

Noatak unscrews the canteen and bends the water out and it starts to glow a clear sky-blue over Bolin's burn. Bolin winces and hisses in through his teeth as the burn bubbles under the dome of water, the charred, spongy flesh spilling up and out, his skin turning raw and smooth. It takes a few moments and then the water dims and spirals gracefully back into the canteen, leaving only a new, smacked-pink streak of skin where the burn was.

"You're one tough son of a bitch, aren't you," Noatak says, capping the canteen again, and Bolin grins.

"Born and raised, sir," he says, in a weak voice that gets stronger on every syllable, and Noatak stands up, arms crossed, scowling down at the three of them -

"And you - I told you that you would learn what I meant," he says, and Mako blanches, his face streaked with tears, "this is your own doing."

Noatak gathers his mask and gauntlets from the floor and holds a hand out to Korra. He pulls her to her feet and she follows him away, leaving Mako and Bolin to each other. Korra turns her head to glance back as she goes and Mako is bowed over with his face hidden in Bolin's chest, his shoulders hitching up and down as he sobs. And Bolin, trying to reassure him, with his hand closed tightly over his brother's - _hey I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere, it's okay, we're both okay, look, you gave me a really cool scar - _she looks away.

* * *

They go to the door and then through it, into the of the bottom of the stairwell, closing the door with a quiet click behind them. Noatak sits on the third step and huffs wearily, rubbing up his face and brushing his hair back in a two-handed movement.

"Boys, playing at being men. They can have some time to themselves," he says, strapping the gauntlets back on, "what had to be done is done."

"No, it didn't," Korra says, her words driven on the impulse of a sudden anger, the ancient rage that she knows frames the Avatar state, tenses it with a cosmic, ageless willpower; "you didn't have to do that. You _chose_to make Mako hurt his own brother."

"You're too nice to them. Mako had to le - "

"No, I'm just treating them the way you always say - everyone deserves to be treated equally and fairly," she shoots back, her voice clear in the stairwell, soaring and billowing, a sail of sound full of a divine wind: this is what she, the Avatar, believes - "and I don't care if they're benders or not. They're people. They're _my_age."

He doesn't say anything and Korra leans against the wall, pressing her hands into the small of her back. It's dark in the stairwell, what with the weak light coming from the red lamps staggered up the walls, and there are indefinite shadows like unmoving smoke curving over his face.

"You're lucky I chose not to go into the Avatar state," Korra says, and the shadows bend and flicker as his expression changes, into - into _what?_

She hadn't felt it, or recognized it, in the warehouse room; she'd been too freaked out during the whole ordeal... but now she feels it, looking at him, at his hands as they tug and tighten the straps, the broad, wrinkled palms, the backs crossed with veins that shift under his skin, and the odd scars braided white into the brown like a mismatched knit.

He bloodbends and heals. He threatens Mako and helps her up. The sweep of his fist over the faces in a crowd, brushing their emotions together like a smear of paint, all the colors blending together into a shade of his choosing - benders are scum, purge them from the world. And then, when he cuts her hair over the kitchen basin, his fingers carding through the strands and turning her head with a light touch, when he is nothing but gentle and tells her about the Northern Lights, the way they whisper-sing across the sky, and the snow on those nights glows with a pale, heavenly color - _I'll take you, someday -_

There's an unreconciled compassion in him, somewhere; and it spites his own iron violence. Or is it the other way around?

"If Mako had to learn, why'd you heal Bolin?"

Korra throws it into the deep shadows and the silence ripples with the challenge.

"Did you really think I was going to let him die?" he asks, his forearms draped over his knees, the mask dangling from his hooked fingers; and Korra can hear a hesitant disappointment under the lofty smooth tones of his voice.

She doesn't answer; she doesn't know. She never really knows.

"It is a terrible thing, to watch your brother suffer at your own hand," he says quietly, after a long moment, and the shadows shift as he frowns at the Amon mask, its blank, frozen gaze.

Korra lets that sink into her, settle to the bottom, come to rest like a leaf dropping out of a breeze. Tarrlok is his brother, whom he hasn't spoken to in twenty-six years... and then something he said earlier... about people without their bending, and respect. It comes back to her and she catches it, puts it with the first thought.

"Who taught you how to bend?"

The silence stretches longer this time, and the question starts to drifts away.

"My father," he says.

And with the way Noatak re-settles himself on the staircase, the words come out of a blackness.

"What happened to him?"

This is the longest silence of all.

She tries again.

"Dad, what happened to your father?"

But now the question is gone, she's dropped it out of her reach, it won't come back. She can feel it leaving, resting on the surface of a deep-running current through a flow of memory... and he sinks it with the weight of an old bitterness; some dense, frozen remorse. Korra sighs and kicks the floor with her heel and follows the corners and turns of the staircase up the stairwell, the black-grey-red crosshatch of light and grated silhouettes.

"Come here," he says, and she stays where she is.

"Korra, _come_," he says again, tossing the mask onto the step next to him, and she goes to him. His hands brush along her jaw, rough and dry, his thumbs stroking her cheeks, and he pulls her forward to kiss her on the brow.

And Noatak murmurs something into her skin, his lips moving soft in the quiet; and the words disappear with the fleeting bright silence of a light falling from a dark and star-dusted sky.

_I wish I could regret this. _

His touch is startlingly warm.


	7. Secrets, Sisters, Training

**A/N:** I DID IT I FINALLY DID IT I WROTE CHAPTER 6 okay i'm in college and i have lots of stuff going on but i powered through for y'all, dear readers, hope you're not too pressed that this took forever.

* * *

**I. SECRETS**

He is still seems broken with despondence, beaten under a grey sullen guilt, but only until Noatak says _stand up, be strong for your brother_ - and then Mako responds like the words are his own name, a child to their father, a spirit of kindling to a spark of prayer. Mako shoulders Bolin's weight and lifts him to his feet, his eyes relit with a gold-struck determination. The way he stands, a wide, squared stance, is full of a bracing, cool pride; and Korra wonders where he got the willpower to do it, how he made lightning after nine days deep underground, away from the sun. Her eyes fall on Bolin, who groans in a low tone as he slumps against Mako; he gives her a feeble, sunny smile and she stops wondering.

"Training starts tomorrow. For now, you're going back to your cells," Noatak says, and Mako's face turns calm and still.

"I'm gonna stay with my brother," he says, in an unwavering voice, and Noatak frowns; "I have to take care of him."

"That's totally fine, go ahead," Korra tells him, before Noatak can say anything, because she likes Mako better like this…. she doesn't want to think about Mako alone with this fresh regret, breaking himself down on fever dreams in an electrified darkness. His only response is to dip his head, slightly; and then to hitch Bolin up more securely and wait until Noatak marches towards the far door, the crate of food in arm.

Korra watches them go, her hand resting just below her navel; there's a cold, numb feeling there, the threads of her own guilt tangled and knotted together. Mako unhinged, Bolin almost died; they're just - just _benders_ - but she's the one who messed up in the first place. _Redeem yourself, Avatar_, but Korra has her own mistakes.

And when Noatak comes back, they leave and climb the stairs as Amon and Tenchu and they don't talk, the echoes of their footsteps beating against each other in the dark.

They're just about to cross the threshold onto the factory floor when Amon stops, turns, and tips her chin up in one hand, forcing her vision to fill with the mask, its knife-edged swirls and bone-white planes and the red sun without heat over his eyes.

"Korra," he says, "don't get attached to them. Don't _trust_ them. Don't be so weak to their charm that you think you're friends."

Korra swallows his words, their bitter flavor thorny in her throat, and nods, but he doesn't let her go just yet; and in the half-light his eyes are the color of stars if stars were black.

"It's how their kind survive. I would not see you get hurt."

"Yes, Dad," she says, because she just wants him to stop talking, because his fingertips bruise doubt into her skin and because it darkens, slows her like water into sand.

"Good girl," he says, and then links his arm through hers and she has to keep up as he strides onto the factory floor, lifting his other hand high over his head in casual, indifferent acceptance of the attention that comes tumbling towards them. All the Equalists on the floor pause in their work and turn to look and bow their heads in deference, a wave of maroon and brown, glinting with brass, thinning as it reaches them - their leaders, their saviors, their grief and their anger, weaponized and honed into a girl and a man.

They reach the middle of the floor, surrounded by mecha tanks with their brushed-shiny insect hulls and rivets are gleaming under the white lights and honeycombed buttresses, and as more people realize that they're here, the sounds of metal shearing and the empty low hiss of blowtorches fall out and end.

And then someone shouts - "Tenchu, way to go!" - followed by someone else's enthusiastic wolf whistle, and then the Equalists break into shouts and cheers of approval.

"Oh, what?" Korra says, slowing down, slightly thrilled; and Amon stops, leaning in.

"For defeating Tarrlok," he says, and Korra grins, waving her hand high over herself, opening herself to all their praise, their admiration.

"Hey, how'd you do it?!" someone asks, as their voices die down, and Korra turns in the direction of the voice.

"Oh, I'm the Avatar, didn't you know?" she calls back, with a gleeful smirk, and it's met with laughter. Like they would believe it.

"Yes, she did quite well, didn't she? Couldn't have asked the spirits for a better child. I think I'll raise her allowance," Amon says, his arm coming around her shoulders, the pride in his words ringing out through the vault, and that's the first she's heard of it. But the Equalists eat it up, the way he squeezes her in a one-armed hug, beaming through his motions. They loved the soft spots in his invulnerability, the bits of spontaneous affection between their dear leader and his daughter. She helps it along by closing the hug, standing on tip toes to give him a clumsy, quick tuck of her arm around his neck.

It's showboating, and she's hollow as she does it, a rough bitterness scouring her out. He almost killed a sixteen-year-old boy, out of spite for his desperate brother.

"Can I get a hug too?" yells an Equalist from the top of a mecha tank, a jovial young man with a grease-streaked face.

"No," Amon says bluntly, with a touch of humor, and Korra is close enough to hear the note of possessiveness; "not until after we've won. Carry on, brothers and sisters, there is work to be done."

And then Amon guides her off the floor to where the Lieutenant is standing, waiting with a clipboard in hand, his expression stoic and indifferent. Hiroshi Sato is with him, dapper and refined in his black and summer-toned waistcoat, his plump lower lip curling pink and wet from under his mustache. The Lieutenant looks grungy and sleepless next to Hiroshi, but then again, the Lieutenant is not faking anything. He has his cowl tucked into his belt and his kali sticks buzzing on his back, a geometric, electric turtle shell, crackling full of energy.

Hiroshi is fidgeting but the Lieutenant moves first, his voice cool and rich.

"The council is up to something," he says, without prelude, handing the clipboard to Amon. Korra scowls and distracts herself with a mecha tank, her gaze drifting over the rivets. The Lieutenant called her a disaster, that night behind Narook's. Well, this _disaster_ got the better of Tarrlok, now what?

But he's distinctly unimpressed, so Korra presses in close to Amon, reading the report over his elbow, skimming the lacy-sharp characters. An after-hours closed meeting on Air Temple Island, with Tenzin, Tarrlok, Lin Bei Fong, the Fire Nation ambassador… and…

"What is Katara doing in a closed council session?" Amon asks, flipping through the rest of the pages; his irritation is plain, all traces of good humor gone.

_Katara_. The name quickens something in Korra, rushes around her like she's standing barefoot in a stream, clears her out. She can feel her heart shift out of place, almost; and the space is filled with a cool, settled ache of longing, of loneliness, of absent joy. She's never met Katara; only seen the woman's face in the newspapers, her weathered leathery face and crinkling eyes, and heard her voice on the radio, aged and dry, but somehow she knows Katara so well - she knows Katara with the nostalgia of a river turned from the sea, a rush of water hurtling and flowing forward, reaching for that - that - melting into, that embrace -

Amon mutters under his breath and pauses, a page curving over itself between his thumb and forefinger, and Korra feels his eyes on her, searching, thinking. Nothing in the news about an Equalist Avatar defeating Tarrlok. Avatar Aang's widow meeting with her airbending son, the chief of police, and Tarrlok, in secret… they both know what that meeting was about.

"I want wiretaps on that island. Did you manage to obtain the minutes, at least?"

"No minutes, sir; just that it happened," the Lieutenant gravels, and Amon makes a noise of disapproval. He rips the report pages off the clipboard, folds them into a square, and tucks them into a side pocket of his pants, reading through the rest of the reports without a word. Korra and the Lieutenant watch this and glance at each other, like he's trying to read the answer on her somewhere.

"Tenchu, you need to turn in your list of recruits to be advanced," the Lieutenant says, as an afterthought; "we'll need that soon."

"Yeah, I'll do it, don't get your mustache in a knot," Korra says, and he scoffs, rolling his head away from her.

"Hiroshi, you have something to say…?" Amon asks, passing the clipboard to the Lieutenant; Hiroshi is anxious, his mouth working frantically; scrapping thoughts together.

"Yes, to Tenchu," he says, with a twitchy little nod of his head, and they all look at her.

"Sure, what's up, Mr. Sato?" Korra says, vaguely surprised; she never really has anything to do with the mechanical front of the revolution.

"Would you speak to Asami for me? About Equalism? It's about time she learns the truth about... this," he says lamely, waving towards the mecha tanks and Amon.

What lingered of Katara vanishes, replaced with a sudden inner itch of irritation.

"What do you mean, speak to her?" she asks, "like what, take her on a tour of the factory or something?"

"No, no," Hiroshi says quickly, "Asami doesn't know anything about this, and - "

"And so you want _me_ to tell her."

Korra thinks of Asami - sweet, beautiful Asami, whom she hasn't seen in four years - and scowls at him. Asami should know by now; know that her father was making tanks and gloves and airships for Equalism, arming the grand ideas of equality and freedom with weapons that boomed and sizzled with righteous power. Why would he wait so long to tell her, when they were so close to the beginning?

"If you would," Hiroshi adds, and Korra's disdain forms easily across her face, her mouth a tilted sneer.

"No, you can do your own dirty work," she says, one hand on her hip, looking him up and down; from his pompadour of salt-and-pepper hair to the luxurious watch-chain dangling across his vest, to his shiny, pointed black shoes, embroidered with gold braids. And then back to Hiroshi's face, doughy and preened; his wealth rigid on him like a clamshell, armoring some slimy grey thing.

"'Dirty work' - ? I am merely asking you to talk to her, from a perspective she will better understand - " Hiroshi blusters, and Korra feels her blood heat and rise, running an agitated warmth through her.

"No, _you_ talk to her, you're her father! Why're you trying to pass it off on me?!" Korra says, her voice climbing on every word; she doesn't stumble over a single sound and Hiroshi looks taken aback by her tone, but she doesn't care. It irks her, the way he's trying to weasel out of this, like he'll be free of blame if someone else does it - and she hasn't talked to Asami in four years, what the heck would she even say?

"Asami would be more inclined to - " Hiroshi starts with a huff, scowling.

And Korra doesn't know what she's saying anymore -

"You're just scared, aren't you? You don't wanna see the look on her face when you have to tell her the truth, like it's something to be ashamed of, like it's something _wrong_, Mr. Sato - "

All her anger crystallizes, all the edges sharpen into clarity. Korra's fists are clenched, tensed away from her, her nerves are searing, cutting through her. She can't stop herself because she's so disgusted with him, what a coward -

"She's _your_ daughter, telling her the truth is _your_ problem, so _you_ deal with it -

"She's out of line," the Lieutenant says, in an undertone, even as Korra feels Amon's hand on her shoulder, to pull her back -

"_Don't_ touch me!" she shouts, and her startled panic bursts through her - it's the hand that turned Mako's own body against him, and she can see Bolin's face as he screams, twisted in agony, and she can feel the knife and the blows and the pain, all of it, like there is nothing else to feel - she jerks away and blocks him without thinking, her forearm hitting solidly to Amon's wrist - and Korra gapes dumbly at her fist, at him, at his stance braced with a wiry taut anger. She can sense people looking at them, her skin crawling with their questioning gazes, their suspicions.

"I - I didn't - " she stutters, all of her adrenaline pooling out, and whatever she meant to say gets lost in her yelp as Amon grabs her wrist and drags her away, far from the Lieutenant and Hiroshi, until they are out of earshot and hidden behind the nearest completed mecha tank. They glare at each other for a moment as she catches her breath, her chest rising shallow and tight; and then Amon squares her up with purposeful, rough motions, until he's forced her into standing up straight and stiff in front of him.

"You petulant brat," he starts, "don't you _dare_ embarrass me like that again."

Korra opens her mouth to protest and he stops all thought with a sharp knock to the forehead, his knuckles rapping against the mask.

"If you are still upset about my particular lie of omission," Amon says, in a low, growling voice, "then you will work it out with me. But for the love of Princess fucking Yue and all her fucking moonfish, _don't_ take it out on Hiroshi. The man is gutless."

She fixes him with a look, and he heaves a sigh.

"At the very least, do what he cannot," Amon says, "and go tell her the truth."

His hand moves out but Korra doesn't want to be touched, doesn't want his hand on her shoulder or her face, not right now; and she pauses it in motion with a splay of her fingers.

"Fine," she snaps, "I'll do it. In fact, I'll go do it right now. Do you wanna write me some lines, too or should I just - "

"That's enough," Amon says, "now - " and she can hear the words before he says them, their rhythm more real to her than the beat of her own heart - _do what needs to be done._

* * *

**II. SISTERS** / _swadisthana_

Korra remembers the Sato mansion, with its cool gleaming surfaces and overstuffed armchairs and the long ornate runners in the hallways, like prairies of flowers flattened and woven into a soft plushness under her bare feet; and she remembers the glass dome over the atrium, full of the slate winter sky, and she remembers being eight and clinging to her father's pants, her cheek pressed to his thigh, as he spoke to Hiroshi Sato: This is Korra, I think your daughter might like to meet her…

She remembers Asami, bright and quiet, with her lively dark curls and pale petal lips that were quick to smile, and their games of pretend and galloping out to the racetrack to tug on the test drivers' hands, _please take us driving, please please please. _ And they had sparring matches for fun (Asami always won, much to Korra's dismay) and then when they were thirteen, Asami told her about the probending match she saw at the arena and it was cool, _it was so awesome, you should come next time, I think you'd really like it!_

And that was the last time she saw Asami.

Hiroshi tells her that Asami had gone out for a few hours, she'd be back soon, and so Korra absconds to the mansion to wait, rather than spend those hours with her father and his stupid boys' club. She sits at the top of the steps that spread like a bird's tail to the driveway, which loops around the second gate and then slopes to the first, stone sculpted beads strung on a winding asphalt yarn. She thinks of her own apartment, the clanky iron fire escape and the old wooden door, wearing a pale scar into the floorboards with each stiff sweep; and figures that the whole thing could fit comfortably inside the promenade between the gates. The Sato mansion is in the bottom of a valley and the mountains rise around it, fog spilling through the forests soft and grey, the air quiet and cold.

Korra takes the mask off, knotting it to her belt again, and wraps her arms around her knees. And she's tired and wasted from the morning, it's all weighing heavily on her eyes; and Korra muses about bending and Bolin and Mako, stringing daydreams together like notes in an idle melody and then pushing them out with an atonal twinge of guilt. It's nothing to get excited about.

She drops her head, tries to doze, and the daydreams slip from her, sand through her fingers, falling away from something hidden inside them… and she dreams of a girl with no light in her eyes because all of it is in her laugh and her smile, broad and determined, with all of the immovability of a stone monolith. And a smirk, full of amusement and affection: _you gotta face things head on, twinkletoes -_

Korra wakes with a start as an engine turns over and stops. There is a dark red convertible parked on the drive at the bottom of the steps, and the tall, trim girl in the drivers' seat pulls off her gloves and shakes out her dark tresses of hair; they shine and tumble like ribbons of oil. Asami swings her legs out of the automobile and starts walking up the steps, preoccupied with her driving goggles, and then looks up to see Korra - and she stops, half on one step, half on another.

"…Korra? Is that _you_?" she says, her voice rising incredulously, and her green eyes wide, pale spring leaves rimmed with black and lavender.

"Hey, I was waiting for you," Korra says, grinning in spite of herself; despite what she has to do, she's happy to see Asami. She takes the steps down two at a time and catches Asami in a hug that gets returned, carefully, after a moment's pause.

"Korra, what are you doing here? I haven't seen you in years," Asami says, pulling away, her shapely rosebud mouth lilting around the words. And Korra starts flicking through possibilities in her head, like a film reel casting scenes onto a screen, trying to figure out how to play this one out - it took a lot to rile Asami but she had to tell her a lot of things… and Korra feels a snap of anger at Hiroshi, that coward.

"My dad's doing some work with your dad right now, so I figured I'd say hey. Listen, do you wanna go for a drive, catch up?" she says, her hands around Asami's arms, and Asami hesitates, still slightly shocked, the graceful lines of her face curved into confusion. Her eyes drop to Korra's boots and then travel up, slowly, back to Korra's face, and she reaches out for the mask dangling from Korra's belt -

"Great, let's go for a drive," Korra says, taking the keys from Asami's hand and grabbing the other, and she marches down the steps to the automobile, dragging Asami with her.

"Korra, _what_ - wait, are you - why do you look like an Equalist?!" Asami says loudly, trying to pull her hand out of Korra's, and Korra stops, frowning inwardly; this was going to turn into a mess if she didn't do this right. _Face things head on, twinkletoes_, whatever the fuck that meant.

She turns on her heel, keeping her voice as friendly and casual as possible, but it's going to be hard - Asami's eyes are narrowing, the tilt of her eyebrows dropping sharply in anger.

"Do you have a problem with Equalism?"

"Yeah, sometimes - I mean, that crazy man with the mask has some pretty awful ideas - " Asami starts, but falls quiet at the look on Korra's face. And Korra's skin feels hot, a warm annoyance that dries her throat out. Her father is not _crazy_.

"Asami, I'm gonna be on the level with you, trust me… but first, can you just get in the car?" she says, unlocking the door with a chunky metallic click, holding it open for Asami; "please?"

She motions with her head and Asami gives her a questioning look, full of apprehension. Korra resists the urge to shove her.

"Korra, you're freaking me out - "

"Just get in the breezer, Dollface," Korra orders, pressing the keys back into Asami's hand, "everything's fine. I just have to tell you some stuff."

And Asami looks like she's on the verge of fleeing, her whole body drawn up tensely, her expression pale and anxious. But she gets in the automobile and slides across the leather to the driver's seat, and Korra slides in after her, slamming the door shut.

The engine stutters twice, turns over, and grumbles to life as Asami turns the keys, and the full-legged motion of her foot pressing against the brake pedal is steady and calm, even as Korra can see the scattered, alarmed light in her eyes. She wraps her leather-gloved hand around the polished wooden stick shift and glances at Korra.

"Wherever you wanna go, it's up to you," Korra says, settling into the seat, "and I'll tell you what's going on."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm dressed like an Equalist because I _am_ an Equalist. I'm Tenchu," she says, and overhead the sky sags downwards with the weight of overcast grey, a coarse fabric soaked in winter. "And that crazy man with the mask is my _dad_. Which means your dad is an Equalist, too."

Asami opens her mouth, purses her lips, and then, with a startlingly aggressive motion, yanks the shift into position, and slams her foot onto the gas pedal. The car tears off with a rubbery screech and Korra stiffens helplessly into her seat, clutching the sideboard, gripped by the sudden acceleration - thank the spirits they were in the car. Asami always won when they sparred as kids because she had an absolutely brutal palm strike, but she can't use it if she has to watch the road.

* * *

Asami drives all the way to the end of the valley, where the road hugs against the slopes of the mountains, through the rocky cliff sides and deep forests; and Korra knows that if they keep driving, there's a turn-off that winds several dozen miles into the wilderness, to the compound where the flying machines are kept. The chill wind bites at their faces, streaking them with a raw pinkness, and Asami nearly runs the automobile off the road when Korra tells her that there's a factory and prison cells under the mansion.

She pulls over onto a lookout point, a gravel half-moon clinging to the side of a mountain, and turns the engine off, crossing her arms and staring blankly through the windshield. The valley sprawls before them, shallow and lush, and Korra can see the scattered rooftops poking through the greenery and the angular black tangle of the Sato racetrack. The city and the sea are gone in the fog, and the rest of the world vanishes into the greyness, like they've reached the end of existence, the border where things merely fade out.

"So that's why I never met your dad... But what I don't get is _why_," Asami says plainly, slouching low in her seat, her hair bunching up around her shoulders like a mane of curls; "why would my father get involved with you people?"

Korra rolls her eyes but lets the undisguised jab in Asami's tone glance off her. She tucks her hands to her sides, to keep them warm, and thinks to herself, her lower lip curled out. She has a stump speech; she's used it before, during secret meetings in basements and abandoned warehouses, but it works on anger and secrecy and hatred, the thrill of conspiratorial solidarity and resentment made revenge. _Equalism is the fire that forges us into soldiers of freedom; take back your life from those bender scum._ But those weren't her words, her reasons; Noatak wrote them.

"Because bending is bad," she says, "bending causes suffering. He's suffered from it. Bending is abusive and wrong. Bending turns people into… into petty instruments of violence, and we can change that."

"Korra, I don't believe that," Asami says, "I don't believe it at all. Bending is - "

"Asami, you haven't heard half the stories I've heard about what nonbenders have faced at the hands of bending," Korra snaps, thinking of her students, and the way they come to her, hunted by their tragedies; "extortion and assault and rape and all kinds of horrible things, people tell me the worst stories and so they turn to Equalism - "

"But that's not _bending_, that's people! People do horrible things, Korra! You can't be so black and white about it! There's bad _and_ good benders. Look, my mom died because of a firebender, but I don't hate all firebenders because of it. Bending didn't kill my mom, it was a person - "

Korra's chest hurts like a fist closed around it and yanked, everything twisted, shunted out of place, it's all going to burst open and spill out. And Asami keeps going, her words hurtling forth with conviction.

"- a person born with bending who used it to hurt people, a bad, violent person. And bending can do lots of things but it's people who hurt each other. It's us, it's our fault when those things happen - "

"_Shut up!_ It's not my fault!" Korra yells, her voice cutting through the mountain air, splitting it open with the sharpness of her outburst. Asami freezes, mouth half open, as Korra's heart rises in her throat, threatening to break out as a sob. Korra scrambles out of the automobile, not even bothering with the door, and storms off a few steps.

There's no where to go so she kicks the ground with an frustrated shout, spraying gravel over the edge of the cliff; and her breathing comes in deep and dry and empty, doing nothing to calm her, absolutely nothing. Korra puts her hands on her head and closes her eyes, reaching for something, anything; the first thing that comes to her is Naga, coarse white fur and soulful dark eyes, the canine quirk of her brows.

Korra drops to the ground and it's cold and rough, even through her pants; she crosses her ankles and throws her hood over her head. She hears the automobile door open and slam shut, and then Asami's boots crunching on the gravel; and Asami's hand is warm on her shoulder.

"Korra, what - " Asami says, as she sits down next to Korra, and Korra doesn't even want to look at her, this sweet, innocent girl she has to feed the bitter herbs of war.

"It's not my fault," Korra says again, "I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I didn't want it."

"Want what to happen?" Asami says, and she's stricken with concern as she leans in, tilting her head to look past the edge of the hood into Korra's face. Heat spreads under Korra's eyes, tight and streaky, and she clamps her jaw shut against a growing ache.

Korra looks back at Asami, and she feels ugly and swollen, bloated with regret and the unfairness of it all. And everything feels wrong; everything always feels _wrong_, like she's living the wrong life.

"I'm a bender," she says, "Actually, I'm the Avatar. And my mom died because of my bending, and even though I was just three when it happened, I still feel so…so… "

The words are just beyond her, hidden under the surface of her grief, the color of the ocean at dusk.

"Asami, I don't want to be a bad person," she mumbles, and wipes a sniff from her nose; and the mountain is so still and so quiet that she might not even be talking at all, it's like she's trying to write on the air. Her voice is colorless.

"Korra, I'm sorry, I didn't know," Asami says, pulling Korra closer, so that Korra's head is on her shoulder, and Korra loosens onto her because Asami is the only good thing she knows right now, here on this rock-strewn cliff, the last bit of sunlight on the edge of an eroding empty fog.

"I didn't know either," Korra adds dully, "until like, a week ago, when I went into the Avatar state and almost blew up an alleyway or something. And he said he wasn't mad but he just hates benders so much, he thinks they're all bad…"

"That's nonsense, Korra, and you know it. Even if you really _are_ the Avatar…"

In response, Korra fans her fingers over the gravel and draws a spiral of pebbles up from the earth. They twist slowly, in lazy, rising circles, and somewhere behind all her senses she can feel the mountain whispering to her bones, ageless verses written by the untouched years of the past, when unknowable things loped out of loneliness into the virginal landscapes of humanity. It bridges her to another place, somewhere behind the glass of human life, and she wonders… but it's for another time. The pebbles clack back to the ground and Korra turns her palm over, sparking a flame and offering it to Asami.

Asami lifts her hand over the teardrop of fire, hesitantly, and then closes over it, taking Korra's in her own. The warmth is the same.

"Korra, do you really think you would've been chosen as the Avatar if you were a bad person?"

"I dunno," Korra mutters, "maybe the spirits made a mistake."

"I don't think they did," Asami says, "I think they chose someone who got a raw deal out of her anti-bender dad, but wants to do good things, wants to do right by everyone. You were three when your mom died. You barely knew how to talk, much less understand what you were doing. How could you hold that against yourself? You're a good person, Korra, I know you are."

She rubs her thumb over the back of Korra's hand, reassuring and confident, and Korra wants to believe her so much it hurts - the knot that's been eating away at her since she left the warehouse still sits in her, a dull, distended brick swelling heavy with the current of her conscience… and then it whittles away, untangling, leaving from her body in strips and flakes. She feels the shift of a tide, the loss of an anchor; she is free to float, to catch the wind…

"They made me talk to you," she says, by way of apology, and Asami shrugs.

"So I'll be mad at my dad for not telling me. And I'm not sold on this Equalism thing, but I'll stick with you. I think you need it."

Korra smiles at Asami, squeezing her hand in thanks, and Asami gives her a smile in return. She almost doesn't understand why Asami is so nice, so gracious… she lets it be. Asami is full of a sincere earnestness, a quietly charismatic grace; she wants to be a good person, too.

On the way back to the mansion it starts to rain, first a fine mist and then slim, silver needles of water, and Korra has to feel her way through it but she keeps them both dry the whole way down. And it feels good, it feels wonderful, it doesn't feel bad at all. The asphalt glistens black with rain and the dust runs off the red panels of the car in dark streaks; raindrops beading fat on the tips of leaves, rolling off and bursting open with a pop of sound. The storm hand of the sky touches the world in blessing, a motion that flows clear and strong: you are clean, you are whole, you are absolved.

* * *

**III. TRAINING**

Noatak left the lights on. The prison hallway, lined with cells on one side, is full with chunks of dim yellow light, and Korra is grateful, for their sake.

Korrastands with the keys to the cell in her hand and the strap of the duffel bag cutting heavily into her chest, and she almost feels bad that she has to wake them up. Mako and Bolin are sleeping peacefully, both on the bed, curled towards each other like two halves of a whole coming together. She can hear the even cadences of their breathing through the quiet, little wisps of sleep rising on dreams of good things, or so she hopes. Their coats are folded over the wooden chair, and their shoes are neatly and squarely aligned to the foot of the bed; the box of food is under the table and it's odd, this heartbreak she feels... They shouldn't have had to make this a home.

But there's _bending_ to learn.

Korra tilts the Tenchu mask up to the top of her head and grins. She unlocks the cell door and slides it all the way open with an enthusiastic metallic _bang._

"Rise and shine, chumps! Ready to get your butts kicked in training?" she says gaily, and Mako bolts upright, the blanket tumbling off him, wide awake in a second.

"What the - oh, it's _you_," he says, as Bolin yawns widely, rounding it off with a dog-like whine. Pabu is nested against Bolin's chest, purring happily.

"She's a better wake-up call than Amon, bro," he mumbles, clapping Mako lazily on the back, and Mako groans, shoving the blanket aside and sitting on the edge of the bed. He stretches his arms, one at a time, high over his head, and the muscles of his bare upper body flex and roll with dense strength as he moves. There's a snap as he arches his back and he huffs with contentment, resting his forearms on his knees, blinking blearily at the floor. His forearm is wrapped in a stained, yellowing bandage, from elbow to wrist, and it looks just old enough to be slightly new...

A memory slices through the air: the blade of a knife, speckled with blood, and her breath catches.

Mako notices Korra staring at him and stiffens. A welt of anger rises in her, on the whiplash of her father's cruelty.

"I think Bolin kicked _your_ butt last time, if I remember right," Mako says, after a pause, and Korra smirks.

"Lucky shot, pal, won't happen again!"

She slings the duffel bag off her back, tossing it onto the floor in front of him. Mako drags it forward wordlessly and opens it with cautious movements, like something might leap out, but his eyes soften with pleasant surprise when he pulls out a shaving razor and leather strop. Korra had stuffed it full of things last night, on a whim that surfaced as the tide of her bad mood receded, and she'd puttered around the apartment plucking spare shirts from Noatak's closet and raiding the bathroom cabinet. And Noatak had merely looked up from his spot on the carpet of the den, surrounded by wax-paper blueprints, and warned her again not to get attached.

But there are bad benders, and good benders...

"Young lady, no disrespect to your sifu or I'm not showing you any of my moves," Bolin says cheerfully, sitting up with a throw of his hands, and his chest is wrapped in snug, clumsy bandages that Korra realizes are the remains of his and Mako's shirts.

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Sifu Bolin, I got some moves of my own," she snorts, and Mako chuckles as he pulls a black undershirt over his head, rolling the fabric down, and then he reaches into the duffel bag again... His expression slips into narrow-eyed ill humor as the Equalist uniform top unfolds from his hands, thick and maroon, the brass buttons flashing dully.

"I'm not wearing this," he mutters, and Bolin clambers out and snatches it from Mako.

"Speak for yourself, big bro. It looks warm and you ruined my jacket," he says, and Mako mutters incomprehensibly, drawing a hand down his face, taking a moment to forget or remember or both. Korra wants to say something, the words swelling in her throat - _it's not your fault_ - but he stands up and crosses the room in three steps, pulling aside the curtain in the wall and slipping into the tiny bathroom.

"Hey, you have a few minutes to get dressed, and then we're starting with firebending. So that's you, Sifu Mako," Korra says, and he murmurs noncommittally and turns the tap in the sink, cupping his hands, dousing himself in cold water. Orphaned by fire. He's been dealing with this for much longer than she has, Korra thinks; he doesn't need anything she could say.

* * *

Bolin sits on a crate in the warehouse, Pabu crouched on his lap; and he stares into Amon's mask with an unflinching curiosity as Amon peels the bandages back and gingerly presses his fingers to the burn. It's only slightly better than yesterday, drier and less shiny, and Amon pours water out of a canteen into his palm and passes it, glowing bright blue, over the wound. And he does it like he's painting, brushstrokes of water trailing from his fingertips.

Korra and Mako are stretching, loosening up; Mako is sitting on the floor with his legs straight out, doubled over with his chest to his knees, but he can't look away from Amon's hands as they sweep over Bolin. Korra can't look away either, as she strips off the bulk of her uniform, all the padding and the overcoat; but for a different reason. Her father is being unnervingly casual about using his bending in front of Mako and Bolin, what with the waterbending and healing... They better not be dumb enough to ask about it.

"You know, sir," Bolin says, with a sudden brightness, as he pulls the Equalist uniform over his head, fluffing his hair up in the process; "you don't have to wear that mask. We know what you look like, dude."

Amon yanks his hand away like Bolin bit him and straightens up, splashing water to the ground; Mako gapes in abject horror but Korra claps her hand to her mouth, the sound bursting out as a high-pitched giggle.

"Sorry, dude - I mean, Dad. Father. _Sir_," she says, as Amon glares at her.

But after several long seconds, the silence wound wiry tight around them, Amon tips the mask up and drops his hood. They again skipped applying the scar this morning and so he is fresh and clean, the austere curves and angles of his face thrown into shallow relief in the pale light.

"Fine. You're healing well, young earthbender," Noatak says, straightening up and bending the water back into the canteen, "but if you have any problems sleeping or with your memory, you are to inform me at once. Lightning strikes disrupt the mind as much as they do the body."

"No sir, none at all," Bolin says, and Mako breathes a quiet sigh of relief.

"Are you two ready?" Noatak asks, shooting a look at Mako and Korra, and Korra can't keep her grin from splitting her face because this is bending practice, she's going to bend at last.

"Yes sir," Mako says, getting to his feet, and he bows, fist to palm, to Korra. She bows back, feeling a thrill steal up her spine, into her fingers and toes; she can already feel fire beating in her, like a second heart, heat throbbing in her breast...

Mako steals a look at Noatak, who is watching impassively, his hands clasped behind his back, and he clears his throat.

"Okay, why don't we start with... Um, show me what you can do."

"What I can do?" Korra repeats, stupidly; she thinks back to all the hours she's spent on the roof, punching bolts of fire through the air, burning up loose-leafs of newspaper with heated relish, and her father doesn't know... Oops.

"Yeah, that's... what I said," Mako says, with mild exasperation, and she blushes.

"Alright, let's see..."

Korra drops into a stance, her fists up, rocking slightly on her feet; and she closes her eyes for a brief moment - searching for the feel of fire, the sun singing through her blood, the gold-hot pulse of life coursing through her veins, her heart pumping currents of flaming joy to her fingertips and calling it back, there are good benders and bad benders and fire doesn't have to be death -

She opens her eyes and punches out, her body turning with the motion, all of her energy and power surging to her fist. An arrowhead of fire lances forward, fueled on breathless exhilaration; it burns through several yards of air and turns feathery, curling up on itself, shedding bronze flecks of light before vanishing. She laughs, her fist still out; it was beautiful.

"Wow, that was great!" Bolin gushes, beaming at her, and she shrugs happily, _no big deal._

"Not bad," Mako says, and Korra rounds on him.

"Not bad?! But that was awesome!" Korra says, bouncing on her heels, pumping the air with both hands, "I've never made that much fire before!"

"Korra, he's being nice," Noatak interjects brusquely, and her excitement curdles on itself, stifled by a sudden glass coldness.

Mako jerks his head towards Noatak, his gold eyes narrowing.

"Actually, it was just fine, for an untrained Equalist Avatar," he retorts, hitting the word _Equalist_ with a clipped frostiness, and carries on without waiting for a response: "Korra, your power was good, but your stance was off. Firebending is more direct, like this. "

He swings out, his arm straightening, and a plume of fire erupts from his fist, just like hers. Korra watches him, sharply aware of Noatak bristling with icy displeasure out of the corner of her eye. She puts the thought away and does the movement again, without fire.

"Better. But, um. May I?" Mako says, motioning towards her, and Korra nods. He moves behind her and lifts her arm, pushing her gently into the right position, one hand on her shoulder, and she lets him. His presence feels dark on her, like heat from coals, brimming with unspoken warmth... A feeling like a fingertip slides up her back, stripping a single nerve raw, all the way to the nape of her neck, and as Mako lets go and steps back Korra finds her breath again.

"Okay, go ahead and do it again," Mako says; yes, again...

And she shoots a blistering comet of fire from her fist, the hot air rippling and warping around it, the space around her shimmers with heat and it feels, it feels like - it's not bad, not bad at all...

* * *

oh man Mako's pressed WHY SO PRESSED, MAKO

what's the council up to, hmm? what are asami and korra gonna do now, eh?

(as always, comments/reviews greatly appreciated, and shenanigans over at pulpofiction tumblr dot com.

p.s. help me hit 75 reviews? :D)


	8. Intermission

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR LOVELY REVIEWS + FAVES + FOLLOWS :D i've only been writing fanfic since march and you make me so happy 3

okay, so: chapter 7 is on its way, I swear; but in the meantime, here's a short intermission. It takes place during part 1 of chapter 7, which, with luck, will be up in a week (and without luck, within two.) This is all Noatak and Korra having father-daughter bonding time

* * *

**intermission**

Korra can't stop thinking about how quickly Mako and Bolin slip into an easy playfulness when Noatak is not around. First they're tight-lipped, stiff, almost distant; a cross-armed winter sets in and frost collects. And then in the space of a blink, they thaw into a giddy season of spring: Mako ruffling Bolin's hair, Bolin fixing it, Mako ruffling it again; Bolin dropping Pabu onto Mako's head as he does crunches. An almost ritualistic exchange of insults and mockery that roll lightning-quick off their tongues: _who needs you when I have a box of matches_ _whatever my_ _precious sugar dumpling_ _shut up you burnt rooster cluck goes the baby turtle duck _and it ends with Bolin yelling "who's the baby turtle duck now, huh?!_"_ as he wrestles his brother down with exuberant indignation.

She's curled in the armchair as jazz crackles out of the radio, skimming through her thoughts, turning each one like a page in a picture book. A trumpet squeals through a dizzying array of notes and Noatak reaches out from the couch without looking up from his papers and fumbles for the dial, softens the music; a smooth fade of sound. The yellow lamplight glints off his glasses as he tilts them with a precise hand.

Korra pauses on Mako's smile, the one that means _Bolin_, not the cheeky roughhousing grin but the faint one that starts deep behind his eyes and opens slowly, shyly; rare like a wildflower growing between the cracks of a sidewalk. He loves his brother.

Her gaze wanders around the room, at the bookshelf packed with volumes on bending theory and government, encyclopedias, history books, her sparse collection of novels; the framed charcoal sketches on the wall of polar animals, smudged and blackened, as familiar to her as the sound of her own voice. Noatak doesn't change much about the space they live in.

Korra wonders if she was always meant to be an only child.

And Tarrlok is her uncle, _Councilman Tarrlok_, who Korra knows only as grainy pictures in the newspaper and a slick voice on the radio and not as her father's brother. She looks at Noatak - twenty-six years, he said, hasn't talked to Tarrlok in twenty-six years - there are fine grey lines in his hair, his leathered skin aged into aniline, an unfelt weariness in the way he sighs, thumbs his lip in thought. It's hard to imagine him any younger, like he was made this way, born this way, big and stern and gravelly, already in the grip of his revolution. But she knows, or feels it at least - he used to smile more.

"Dad," Korra says, and he hums in response: _hnn_, barely paying attention as he frowns at the blueprints on the page.

"Dad, what… what were you and Uncle Tarrlok like as kids?"

He looks up from his papers and turns to her, still frowning.

"What would possess you to ask me that?"

"I dunno. Just curious," she says, tilting her head onto her curled hand; "you never talk about that kind of stuff."

"You're right. I don't," he says shortly, narrowing his grey eyes at his papers, and Korra huffs and rolls her head away onto her shoulder. Typical answer. But she wants to press him, make him give her _something_, at least.

"Come on, you never tell me anything! Just… tell me one thing, okay? Just one?" she says, "please, Daddy?"

Noatak's chest lifts as he sighs, deep and quiet, thinking; and then he puts the papers on his lap, stares at a point above the floor, peaks his fingers together in a splayed gesture of prayer and brings them to his lips.

He blinks and smiles to himself, breathing out a single weightless laugh: _heh_.

"Fine. We were - we tended to behave, except with each other," he says, and Korra watches a dreamy look pass over him, pacific and mild; his eyes the color of a calm day at sea.

"When he was five, I convinced him that he was adopted," he says, "that our mother and father found him in a turtle seal den and that we would soon return him to the wild to be with his kind…"

Korra snorts with laughter; the image that comes to mind is Tarrlok squeezed and hunched into a rocky den in the snow, surrounded by squawking turtle seals.

"If I recall correctly, he started to cry," Noatak adds, grinning broadly. He rubs his chin and smirks, mouth half-open, nodding slightly, and his voice takes on color of simple, unbothered nostalgia, clean as fresh snow.

"And Tarrlok had - he had quite the baby face, round plum cheeks and big wet eyes, blushed easily - _but Noatak, I don't wanna live with the turtle seals, I wanna stay with you,"_ he says, in a childish whine. And Korra laughs again, but does not fail to catch the slip of his expression into a stony thoughtfulness, his eyes widening as they follow something to a horizon that she can't see.

"You were _mean_, Dad," she prods lightly, and he rolls his eyes at her, waving off her comment with a toss of his hand.

"Nonsense. Harmless juvenile tricks that were all returned in kind. Once, he hid strips of raw fish in the pockets of my parka and so seal penguins followed me around all day, nosing and chirping at me, damn insistent creatures. I could not figure it out - " and Korra bursts out laughing again, imagining a gaggle of penguin seals waddling after her father, swarming around his legs, what an insufferable affront to his dignity, _Tarrlok you whelp_.

"- but I would do better than mere penguins. Tarrlok hates stewed sea prunes. _Detests_ them. So I dosed his milk with a seaweed powder that turned his tongue green and told him it was only the beginning sign of a terrible disease… and the only cure was to eat stewed seaweed prunes."

Noatak chortles and bites his lip; he takes off his glasses and cleans them on the edge of his shirt, the navy fabric pulling away in slack curves from his frame. Korra can't help but sympathize with Tarrlok; stewed sea prunes are _vile_.

"Naturally, our mother asked him _why_ he was stuffing himself with sea prunes, and - she tended to encourage us - so that night I go to bed only to find it strewn with - "

" - stewed sea prunes," Korra giggles, and he nods widely at her.

"They were _everywhere_. In the pillow, between the sheets. There was a horrendous squish. My bed reeked of sea prunes for a week. The injustice of it all was that I disliked them just as much as he did."

"Nah, that was totally fair, Dad," Korra says, and Noatak clicks his tongue and scoffs: _hardly_.

"Tarrlok and I had our moments, but we were good-natured enough to each other. We only… _had_ each other, since we were not very well-acquainted with the local village children," he muses, "our father was rather jealous of his privacy."

He says it casually, simply, merely a detail of the story; but Korra hears the echo behind the words, of something very different from light-hearted reminiscence in the wistful baritone tones of his voice. This is the first time he has ever volunteered anything about his father, anything other than a far-eyed look and silence.

"What was he - " she starts, and Noatak rises abruptly; rolling up off the couch, throwing the papers aside, moving to stand in front of her. His eyes are struck with a pleasant brightness as he cups her face in his palm, earnest and loose.

"You still need to be taught how to waterbend," he says, as a sudden thought; and Korra can't help it - she gasps and breaks into an open-mouthed smile, a breathless joy flooding through her: waterbending. _Waterbending_.

"Really?! When?!"

He grins and kisses her on the cheek.

"Soon," Noatak says, "I'll take you into the mountains. The lakes will suit us well. Now, off to bed with you."

He thumbs her nose and Korra flinches and giggles and raises her arms to wrap them around his neck. Noatak lifts her off the armchair, carries her to her bed, smacks her with another goodnight kiss - and the feeling is like coming home, to the warm promise of an embrace from someone who loves you, coming home and hearing your name in their sun-colored voice for the first time in years. Like waking up, with dawn dressing the sky in blue-white lambskin light, on the first morning after you are home again, home to who you are, who you were; the whole of your self in your hands again.

Waterbending! She sleeps, dreams floating, rippling as silken fine-petal lotuses on the soft glass water of thought. Waterbending, at last.

* * *

wow Korra calls him "Daddy" and Noatak folds like a house of cards, good job even you can't resist those big blue eyes. they needed some fluffy moments.

usual plug for my tumblr, pulpofiction tumblr dot com, and feel free to PM me here or there with questions/comments.

reviews are lifeblood, don't leave me anemic (◕‿◕✿) help me hit 90?


	9. Lessons, Soldiers

A/N: HERE YOU GO KIDS chapter 7

chapter 8 comes in january

* * *

**I. Lessons**

Korra doesn't notice it was ever there until it starts to leave, slink away on soft furred feet: an animal of restless unease, full of pale thirst. She wakes up every morning and sees it slip out the corner of her mind's eye, past the open door of her thoughts, an alley cat spooked by a passing light. She can feel why it's leaving. Every morning, she packs her uniform into her satchel, shrugs into her winter coat, and tears the asphalt with the rubbery squeal of her motorcycle as she rides to the Sato mansion, descending into the mountain, down the staircase, into the frigid, still air of the warehouse. And every training session is another nudge, another step towards the exit: it's time for you to go, like a lingering stain, or an itch in a spot just now within the reach of her fingers.

Mako shows her how to cut the air with a kick of fire and she starts to love it, the leap forward and the twist of her heel, the point of her toes burning a gold, glowing arc. Noatak gets held up at the factory on certain mornings and when he is gone, so is the militancy from her motions, and she feels free to just move.

And Korra loves the roar of her own body, the blurred ripples of heat, the nimble play of flames as she weaves them through her fingers. Fire is not about power but willpower: it won't respond if you're half-hearted, if you're unsure, if you don't love it like you love the insistent pulse of blood pounding alive in your neck as you stop to breathe, rolling the soot off your palms in sweat-slick clumps. Where does that come from? What does firebending even _burn_ on?

"I don't really know," Mako says, with his hands over his head, a drop of steam salty wet sliding down his temple; his eyes brighten like sparks in fresh air when he works hard. Twelve sets of rhythmic, whirling kicks and throws wear them both out.

"Firebending's not fueled on anything normal, like wood. It burns… on powering through. On determination."

"That makes sense," Korra says, pulling on her tank top where the fabric sucks to the dampness on her skin, the small of her back, under her breasts; "in a weird, spiritual mumbo-jumbo kind of way."

"I never really had the chance to think about it in a 'spiritual mumbo-jumbo way,'" Mako muses, as he collapses to the cool floor and lays flat, arms spread; "I just had to do it."

She grabs a hand-cloth from atop a crate and drops it onto his chest. Mako feels for it and presses it over his face with both hands, soaking up the perspiration; his own shirt is blotted with dark spots, the damp exertion of discipline clinging heavily to his frame.

"You do it pretty well for not having any formal training, Hot Stuff," Korra says, nudging him in the shoulder with her foot, and when he pulls the hand-towel away to smile at her, she tips her canteen and spills water onto his face.

He splutters and scowls and Korra smirks. Mako is feline to her, self-serious in a lithe, aloof kind of way: easy to tease in the way cats are. He trains with his red scarf belted and knotted around his waist, the ends tucked in, and refuses to explain it.

"That was mean," he mutters, and she grins.

"But it felt good, right? Riiight?" Korra prompts, sitting on her heels next to him and pouring water onto another hand cloth, muffling the flush on her face, and Mako is sheepish.

"Fine, yeah, it felt good," he says; and when she does it again, Mako flails out, knocking her off-balance and onto her rear as she laughs. Something returns to her, something she didn't even know was missing; like an old tree putting forth shy pastel shoots after seasons of cracked dryness. _Okay, Korra, that was good,_ but try it this way - and he's stopped saying her name like it's spelt with glass, breakable and sharp. Now it sounds good in his mouth; has all the flowing resoluteness of a wave crashing on a beach.

And it's different from the way her father says it.

* * *

After about a week and a half, Bolin's burn is almost healed, the discolored skin stretched tight with ropy seams of scar tissue. Noatak deems him fit to start training and they start earthbending the very next day.

"Okay, Korra, excited for earthbending? You know, only the best. Bending. Ever," he says, rubbing his hands together with glee, and the way Bolin says her name has a style all its own; the syllables spin when he throws them out, with all the energy of a child's top etching circles onto a sidewalk. Noatak is in the factory again and Mako is half-sprawled on the floor, Pabu draped lazily around his bare shoulders. Korra rolls her own shoulders and lets an easy relaxation push through her.

"Oh really? The best?" Korra says, thrusting her arms out behind her back and bending forward, stretching out an ache.

"Yeah, I mean, anybody can airbend, watch - " he blows a loose raspberry, his cheeks puffed out, and Korra laughs.

"That's about as much airbending as I can do, anyway," she says, and Bolin raises his eyebrows at her. The way he looks at her - slightly confused, a little sympathetic - makes her feel the absence of airbending for the first time, like waking up in a deep dawn hour, knowing sleep won't come again. Why can't she airbend?

"I have no idea why, my dad'll figure it out," Korra muses, more for herself than for him, and Bolin quirks his lips skeptically.

"Yeah, he seems like a pretty smart dude," Bolin says, "Anyway! Show me whatcha got."

Korra frowns and takes a wide-legged stance, bending at the knees; it seems right to ground herself this way, firm over the earth. She tries to pull up the feeling of earthbending like she did with firebending - and Korra can feel a hardened, cool energy deep in the bedrock; she is the stone pillar rising from the center of a still pond of enduring, endless power -

She lifts her foot and slams it down, feeling the ripples swell and course forward from the impact, and she grins as a column of rock breaks through the floor a dozen yards away, unyielding and firm, like it was always meant to be there.

"Beautiful, wow!" Bolin says, with an admiring look at her pillar; "that's some pretty solid earthbending!"

"Thanks, I learned that one by beating up Councilman Tarrlok. He tried to arrest me," she says, and Mako snorts into his hand, pulling a wry face.

"You're nuts," he says, half-laughing, and she fixes him with a defiant look. _Whatever_. Bolin lifts his hand, palm out, full of flair.

"Hush, oh brother of mine, it's my turn. Okay, so a little less loosey-goosey..."

They try again, Bolin miming each movement, and she imitates him until she feels each movement of chi under her feet like breath in her lungs, familiar and unfelt - and then she calls more pillars from the earth, over and over again, until the warehouse is studded with waist-high columns of earth and the floor around them is puckered and pulled tight, veined with cracks of earth. And Bolin shows her how to push each one back into the ground; call them back to the earth with a stomp of her foot and a downwards sweep of her palms, a motion graceful and assertive like the first wingbeat of a bird.

She pushes the last one back into the floor, stomp-sweep, and the floor flattens without a single trace of misplaced rock.

"You're a natural," he says, and gives her a double-handed high-five.

"So how does earthbending work?" Korra says, as he holds his hands out again, palms up, at waist-height; and she slaps them again with an impulsive thrill -

"Beats me - no, no, that's not how the game works, c'mon, don't you know how to play?" Bolin says, and does it again, offering his upturned hands. Korra lifts her own hesitantly and looks at him, wondering what he wants her to do, maybe it's some obscure bending game…

"She doesn't know, show her," Mako calls out.

"Nah, I don't wanna spring my master skills on a rookie. You play with me," Bolin says, and Mako hesitates, studying him with a guarded look. Bolin grins broadly and Mako gets to his feet, Pabu teetering on his shoulder and chirping at them.

"Play what?" Korra asks, feeling defensive: her chi-blocking, Equalist-meeting childhood was just fine, thank you very much. Mako smirks at her, in a challenging kind of way, and she scowls at him as he cracks his knuckles and steps in front of Bolin.

"It's a reflex game, watch," he says, as he places his hands lightly over Bolin's; "he has to try and hit my hands… Do your worst, little bro."

"I'm gonna kick your ass, you noodle," Bolin returns wholeheartedly, and Mako yanks his hands away as Bolin's fingers twitch - Mako puts them back, his brow furrowing with intense concentration, serious as usual. Bolin's eyes are lit full of childish good humor and Korra feels her smile grow. She never learned this game.

"You're gonna lose," Bolin says in a sing-song tone, and Mako jerks away again after a long pause. He puts them back delicately, his fingers easing into a loose splay, and his gaze flicks to Korra, a smile playing on his lips -

"Shit!" he mutters, as Bolin hits the tops of his hands with a resounding slap, and he shakes out the pain with a frustrated grunt, ugh.

"Okay, again - " and within seconds Bolin slaps again and Mako stares blankly in defeat as Korra giggles into her cupped hands.

"You're not very good at this, are you," she says, and he sighs and motions for her hands, his on top of hers.

"You hit me," he adds, but she already knows. Mako lifts his hands away as she flips hers and tries to hit; and there's several long moments where he just waits for her to move, avoiding her second attempt with ease. She chews on her lip, trying to hold back her excitement - she locks eyes with Bolin as he tries not to laugh - Korra lashes out and smacks Mako in the nose.

"Hey, _ow_!"

"Did I win?" she asks, as he rubs his face, and Bolin bursts out laughing and reaches out to double his brother over in a headlock, squeezing Mako's head to his waist. Pabu scrabbles up Bolin's arm and curls around his neck, a dusty-bright red over the dark olive Equalist jacket.

"She totally won, bro," Bolin says, ruffling his hair with a giddy fondness, and Mako responds with a dramatic groan.

"I can't believe you're taking her side," he complains, "she _cheated!_"

"Can't help it, she's my favorite Equalist," Bolin says, "and I'm her favorite bender. Right, Korra?"

He loops his free arm around her shoulders and she feels her skin flush on the warmth of their affection, an airy happiness expand inside her. She wants to name it, call it into being; let it open like a soft ruffled bloom in the rich loam of feeling.

"Right," she says, with a laugh, slipping her arm around Bolin's waist; and then she pats Mako on the cheek as he winces away good-naturedly. "Don't you worry, Hot Stuff, you can be my favorite bender tomorrow - "

They all startle as the far door opens, and Korra snaps up and steps away as Noatak strides in, pulling off the Amon mask as he does. Bolin and Mako detach from Korra like they've been jumped by a spark of current.

"Hi, Dad," she breathes, "We were just taking a br - "

She stops as his ill humor breaks like a storm. And she'd felt it, even before he walked in, a charcoal peal of thunder rolling in before him.

Noatak turns sharply to Mako and Bolin and their reactions are immediate. Mako's bristling, brassy posture Korra understands; his eyes flash with the strident tone of a note that's been struck one too many times. It's Bolin's studious slip into nonchalance she doesn't get. His expression bares itself; his shoulders sloped with the slouch of a tree branch heavy with low-hanging fruit, a passive offering of goodwill.

Korra swallows a dry unease as Noatak advances on Bolin -

"Under no circumstances are you _ever_ to touch her in such a casual manner," he growls, his voice dropping an octave on the weight of his displeasure, and Bolin draws away, taking a half-step back; "she is _my_ daughter and you will afford her that respect."

"Yes siree, you are absolutely correct. Hands to myself at all times, no hugs or high-fives - " Bolin says brightly, and cuts off with a squeak as Noatak whips his hand forward and catches him under the jaw, dragging him closer with a clawed grip.

"Don't mock me, boy," Noatak drawls, as Bolin winces, slightly bowed over.

"Wouldn't dream of it, sir, you are unmockable," Bolin mumbles, muffled by Noatak's hand, and Noatak makes a sound of utter contempt deep in his throat, his fingers curling -

Mako closes his hand around Noatak's wrist, calm and deliberate, pushing Bolin away at the same time. He muscles into the space between them with an open antagonism, shoulders squared and upright. And, lurking behind his expression, wrestled into submission by a staunch determination - fear.

"Get your hands off my brother," Mako says, and Noatak's anger falls like a shadow down his face. Korra looks at her father and then at Mako and back to her father again - he's staring Mako down, his wrist still caught, but the luster over his grey eyes - like the dark glimmer of ripples in a well, drawing memories from an opaque deepness of years. He's seeing something else.

"You forget your place, son," he says, "but if you don't want to remember it, that's fine with me - " and Korra feels a familiar dense queasiness settle into her stomach, bubble thickly into her throat - she knows it's coming - Noatak grabs his shoulder and crumples Mako with a knee to the midriff, forcing out a coarse grunt of pain - and crack hooks his fist into Mako's face.

For half a second Mako looks like he's going to collapse; bent over with his hand bunched into the fabric of his shirt and gasping for air in stilted breaths, each one sticking audibly in his chest. He stares at the floor and the color in his eyes is dazed - they flash bright again as he straightens up. He's stubborn enough.

But Korra knows, as Noatak considers him with a hard-edged expression, that it's not enough. It will never be enough, he is never done - and Noatak goes tch with a disgusted look and slaps Mako, a sharp, open-handed clap that blotches pale red even as Mako turns his head back, bleeding from the nose..

"You just don't know when to stay down, do you," Noatak says, taking a step forward - and Mako takes a step away, a faltering half-motion of his foot, as his throat visibly jumps. He reaches behind him to push Bolin back again; slight and fearful - get behind me -

- and Bolin puts his hand on his shoulder and brushes past him, looking at Noatak.

"Sir, we're going to continue earthbending now," he announces, with his arms crossed, and Noatak blinks slowly, twice, like something is breaking down in his mind.

"Go clean yourself up," he orders, and Mako sits heavily on a crate instead, sniffling into his shirt as he pulls it up to wipe his face. Bolin's gaze drifts to his brother, a flicker of shimmering green, the lushness of a breeze filling a canopy.

"Korra. Don't make me say it a third time," Noatak says, and she tries to force the rage down, feels it boiling up inside her. Now is not the time. _Don't get attached._ The meaning is water, takes the shape of his mood, fills what he needs it to fill. He flips a nearby empty crate with an efficient kick and sits, fitting her with an expectant look.

Bolin takes a deep, quiet breath and lets it fall to his feet.

He smiles gamely at Korra.

"Okay, wanna learn how to raise a wall? It's kind of like what we just did, pretty similar move," he says, and she nods.

"Yeah, I'd like that," Korra says, and it's difficult and rough and sore, just like she thought it would be.

* * *

She and Noatak are almost to the top of the stairwell when Korra has a fit of impetuous inspiration and stops dead on the stairs, staring at his back; she wheels on her heel and starts down the staircase again.

"Korra! Where are you going?" he says, and she bluntly waves the question off.

"I forgot my mask, it's sitting on one of the crates," she calls back, as her mask dangles from her belt, bouncing against her hip. The lie is swift and easy on her tongue.

She sprints across the warehouse floor and shoulders through the door into the prison hallway. She can hear Mako and Bolin talking as she flies past the first empty cell and the second -

- not talking. Mako's back is to her and she stops just out of sight; they haven't noticed her yet.

"… kind of game are you playing? He doesn't need any more excuses to hurt us, so can you please cool it with the attitude - !" Mako's voice, agitated and rising. Bolin comes in, level and even-toned:

"I'm not scared of him, bro. I'm not going to be scared anymore and I don't want to be. He's just a guy, even with the mask and whatever - "

She draws their voices on the wall with her finger. Sharp-jointed and spiky, the snap of autumn leaves underfoot. A curling, rolling line, a hillside in fog.

"It's a really dumb decision, Bo, he's bad, he's _sadistic!_ The man clearly does not give a damn about other people, maybe her but even that's a stretch - "

She's heard enough.

"My dad is not _bad_," Korra blurts, stepping into view; Bolin gapes at her with a slack mouth and Mako turns his head over his shoulder.

"He's not," she says again, but the words are stripped of feeling.

Mako wheels around and crosses the cell to the bars in a short burst of energy, slipping his forearm through the spaces and holding it out to her. He catches her gaze and forces it down to the dark lines of scars on his skin, running from elbow to wrist, and Korra feels her anger turn inwards and shrivel.

"Prove it," Mako snaps. Korra's mouth fills with all the things she wants to say -_ he's just intense, he's doing this for a good reason, he's under a lot of pressure_ - but none of them take shape and the words smoke away. She glances at Bolin, at his jade-green eyes polished by the tweak of his brows, hardened and determined. He doesn't want to be...

"Is that what earthbending is? Not being scared?" she says, and Bolin doesn't smile, doesn't offer a high-five, doesn't open for her like a fruit softened by bruising. He stays resilient. It's not the right answer.

"No," he says, finally; "it's making a decision. You make a decision and you don't back down."

* * *

**II. SOLDIERS**

Korra's chi-blocking class had been moved to a different basement after the raid, under a pawnshop in Orchid Hills district, a wide, squat room with low ceilings and no banners, thank the spirits. And she puts away thoughts of Mako and Bolin, to focus on teaching.

At the end of the night, her chi-blocking students thank Korra for the lesson and bow at the hips, palms pressed together; and as they slip into the tunnel, one by one, Korra motions at Daoming and Kinalik to stay behind. So they wait by the door, and Korra casts a glance at Asami, still stretching on a mat in the middle of the room.

When she first showed up to class, her style was a martial art in every sense of the latter term and none of the former: indulgent and luxurious, an early-evening dance of silky curves and lilting jazz, an artful small talk spoken by the body. Built for fine things, an ornamental knife, and completely unsuitable for war.

But now she is more of a sword, chi-blocking with austere poise, her expressions cooled by sang-froid. Korra feels like an axe next to her.

She scowls as the last student leaves.

"Okay," Korra says, and Kinalik and Daoming snap to attention: his expression is earnest over his brawny build (pleased at being singled out), a coy shrewdness in her gaze (she knows she's good). "You've made excellent progress and you're the top of the class, so I'm gonna advance both of you."

"Fuck yeah," Daoming says, pumping her fist, and then she remembers herself - "I mean, thank you," and she bows to Korra, hands together.

"Thank you," Kinalik says with a warm smile, his long braids sliding off his shoulders as he bows too.

"No problem, you're both great at this. So, I've recommended you to the naval branch," she says to Kinalik, who takes this with a shrug of acceptance, "and you, Daoming, to espionage."

Daoming lights up with glee, her smile toothy and dimpled. The assignments had been easy enough. Korra goes to her satchel against the wall and finds the sheet of paper with the camp locations, holding it out for them to read. She can feel Asami watching her, waiting; pale green eyes pressing into her.

"Tomorrow night you have to report to your locations. Let them know I sent you. Don't take the paper, just memorize where you have to be. They'll ask for a password," she says, as they nod, and with a look at Asami, Korra lowers her voice: "they're gonna ask you 'when are the lotuses in season' and the password is 'when they're called to bloom.' Got that?"

"When they're called to bloom," Daoming repeats, with a thoughtful tone; "what does that mean?"

"Doesn't mean anything. It was a real honor being your teacher, guys. Good luck, sister. Good luck, brother," Korra says, holding the door open; Kinalik salutes her with two fingers and slips out, vanishing into the dark tunnel. Daoming starts to follow him, just barely visible in the darkness, but then she turns and calls out to Korra.

"Tenchu!"

"Yeah?"

"When will… when does it begin?" Daoming asks, her voice charged with a quiet intensity, and Korra takes a breath, thinking - every day brings the final rivet in a new mecha tank, every night a new slogan spray-painted on a wall, and her father stumbles home at odd hours, smiling though a smug exhaustion, _they have no idea what's coming_. It's begun already. It began a long time ago.

"Soon," she says, "it begins soon."

Daoming grins and leaves, her form swallowed in the shadows, and Korra lets the door close as she turns back to Asami.

"You're looking like a real Equalist," she says.

Asami doesn't react to this. She just pulls the brass belt buckles tighter around her waist, tucks the maroon cowl in around her neck, and flips her hair out, gathering and pinning it up into a messy bun. She sniffs and slips her hands into the gloves; all of this with sloped shoulders, slouching back on her hips. Her movements have a mild, indifferent distaste written into them - she flexes her fingers, testing the fit, like something doesn't match; not the right color, not the right style.

She's not a soldier yet, not by any means.

Korra resists rolling her eyes as she opens her satchel again and pulls out her full uniform, working quickly with the straps and buttons. Then she finds the kohl pencil and mirror, and takes the mask off to darken her eyes, blacken the skin around them. She undoes her hair and pulls it back into a bun because - and she takes a deep breath before putting the mask back on, eyes closed - Tenchu is refined, Tenchu is polished, Tenchu does what needs to be done and does it well. Tenchu is a soldier.

What did he tell her before she left that evening? Held her by the forearm as she started to leave, pulled her close, his voice low and sanded with a soft ire: _I don't need to tell you how disappointed I will be if you do not_ -

"Wow," Asami says, behind her, in a soft tone; "Korra, you look… different."

_- if you do not come back with a satisfactory report -_

"Tenchu," Korra says, turning around, both hands on her hips; "Right now, it's Tenchu, and you don't call me anything else. Are you ready to go or are we gonna sit around and wait?"

_- I hope you've moved on from your bout of hesitation -_

There's a flicker of annoyance, a shade off from Asami's normal doe-eyed niceness, and then it vanishes.

_There is no use for the indecisive,_ he'd said.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Asami says, as she pulls the Equalist mask over her head, disappearing under the blank, round goggles and brass piping.

Korra opens the door for Asami and she strides through it, head held high. Ready to go. Not really.

* * *

The plan is simple: find them, test her. And Asami's arms are wrapped tight around Korra's waist as the motorcycle rumbles underneath them, growling into them, loosening their muscles.

Her lips start to numb in the relentless push of frozen air and the sky overhead is a dark yellow-grey as the city lights rise and push against the fog. It drifts down the edges of bricks, sanding all the sharp edges with soft winter touches, veiling the street lights until they hover as ghost-eyes in a pale void.

Korra and Asami careen around the corners, down the streets, past yawning empty plazas and gaping black alleyway gaps. It's late enough that almost no one is around, the streets are lifeless, stripped down to the bare concrete. Asami's grip stiffens when they do see people but Korra holds them in place with her speed, slams past them as a snarl of engine, a wraith of gunmetal and iron.

Asami is quiet the whole time, exists only as a warm presence pressed against Korra. Deep under the vibrations of the bike, Korra imagines she can feel the frantic, nervous pounding of her heart through the uniforms. Asami is not a soldier. Asami is not ready.

Korra slows and turns the bike down an alleyway, quietly, flexes warmth back into her fingers and breathes into her cupped hands. The street is barely visible, blanketed in fog, but she creeps towards it and peers around the corner - the dim shape of an entryway, illuminated by lanterns, just down the street. No one outside. A triad hangout. They think they're safe.

She puts a finger to her lips and waves Asami over. Asami moves without feeling in the Equalist uniform - Korra's used to reading people who hide their faces, but Asami is a closed book. Korra has no idea what she's thinking. It doesn't matter what she's thinking, anyway.

They slink down the block and by the entryway they listen for a minute, the night swelling around them. And then they hear - voices, laughter, flakes of dry words and phrases. Korra's breath hitches: they're here, good. She closes her eyes to steel herself, arm herself - _do what needs to be done_ - her father, like a restless wind inside her, clearing the air for a storm, a wind hollowed by rage and - she is so angry, all the time -

- and then it's easy, it's so fucking easy, it's easy to kick the door down and tear into someone else, grab the nearest ugly face by the collar and snarl that benders are gonna get what they deserve but you don't have to wait, lucky you, slam your fist into his gut and laugh as he chokes, laugh as you dodge a whip of fire and drop the man with the hard edge of your elbow shunted into their neck, and they're just useless triad thugs, scum - this is what they've earned - and the next one freezes water around her foot but the ice shatters as she kicks him in the face, breaks his teeth against the wall, blocks his chi points - a blow to the lower spine with a fleshy crack of knuckles and a silent wave of bloodlust that rises up, razes it all, burns her to the ground. But they all break like glass before her, like raindrops on iron, they scatter and there is a smear of blood on the wall and a limp body on the floor, will he be proud, will he be happy, is this what he wants - !

Someone hits her in the mouth and she doesn't care, he goes down faster than the rest - the last one throws a knife of ice at her and it slices through the shoulder of her uniform. She doesn't even bother to scream but lunges forward, pulls her fist back and grits her teeth as she tastes the heavy wet thud as bile in her mouth, she doesn't even need to block him -

"No, stop - " he starts, as she punches him again -

His eyes roll into the back of his head, his nose broken out of shape, knobby and bruised; and Korra stands over him as he slides to the floor. She twists on her heel, braces for the kick -

Someone grabs her by the shoulders, tries to drag her away, and Korra ducks out of the grip, whirls around, lances out with a fist -

Asami blocks it and shakes her, hard.

"Stop, you're done!" she yells, "you're done! Okay? He's done. There's no more, alright? Stop. Just... stop."

Korra stops and stares at her - Asami's voice is muffled through the mask, is it really Asami, it could be anyone in that uniform - and her heart drums dull into her throat, beating out a dizzying tattoo that stutters through her, pushes everything else out.

She smacks Asami's hands away.

"Yeah, we're done," she says, "did your chi-blocking work?"

"Ko - "

"Tenchu. Did your chi-blocking work or not?"

The Equalist mask covers Asami too well and there is a low moan from a man on the floor as he stirs and lies still; two of the chairs are broken and they tilt on their splintered, brittle legs. Korra wipes her mouth with her palm and it's smeared red, she's bleeding. She bites her lip, licks off the hot metallic taste, and Asami hasn't said anything yet.

The light glints on the goggles as Asami looks around the room, at the unconscious men on the floor, the wooden door jagged and cracked and bristling with splinters. Her eyes are colorless behind the green glass and she still hasn't said anything yet -

Asami turns and leaves, her footsteps hollow on the wooden planks, and Korra storms after her as the street spreads quiet before them.

Korra catches up as Asami pulls the Equalist mask off in the middle of the street, hair uncoiling and spilling out, and she grabs Asami's wrist.

"You're not supposed to take that off," Korra snaps, "put it back on. Right now."

Asami yanks her hand away, the Equalist mask bunched in her fist.

"Or _what_? What are you gonna do if I don't put this back on?" she retorts, and Korra can finally see her face, the fine lines bent with anger.

"What am I - what am _I_ gonna do?" Korra yells, because it's not about what she's going to do, this is Asami, Asami is refusing, Asami is turning her back - "No, what are _you_ going to do? What are you gonna do when you go home and tell your dad you don't want to do this, you don't want to put that back on? Tell me that, Asami, what the _fuck_ are you going to do?"

And she punctuates it with a pointed finger, a stab through the air. Asami draws away, shaking her head, her hand curled to her chest. The street is still sunken in fog, all the windows dark, the doors locked. It starts to snow.

"This is wrong. What we just did is wrong, Korra. I'm not going to do this. I don't - "

"You don't get to decide what's right or wrong! You just have to do what you're told!" Korra snarls, and startles as Asami grabs the Tenchu mask and rips it off her face with a hard yank and a snap as the ribbons break and come undone - no, he'll get mad -

Korra leaps for it but panic makes her sloppy and Asami shoves her away, hitting her hard in the collarbone, holding the mask away from her. The blow winds her, makes her breath wooden; and she glares at Asami.

"Korra," Asami says, "Korra, listen to yourself."

Korra's furious with her, a hot, dry fury - damn fucking princess, doesn't understand -

"You always have a choice. You do," Asami says, snow dancing in the warm wisps of her words, winking with orange streetlight.

"That's a nice thing to believe," Korra says, "I wish I could believe it too. But we're not here to do nice things, and we're not dealing with nice people. Give it to me."

She holds out her hand and Asami doesn't move, the mask still in her outstretched hand. The blue lotus is just barely visible, the color greyed out, a thin rim of pale glow where the curves bend the light.

"Korra, I don't think I can do this," Asami says, raw and plaintive; she can't hold onto her anger like Korra.

"Do you want to know how I do it?" Korra asks, in a flat voice. She's starting to grow tired of this. She gestures for the mask and Asami hesitates before putting the mask into Korra's hand. Korra fits it to her face and knots it, pulling the ribbons tight. Tenchu comes over her, a molten feeling, spilling into all her cracks and fractures.

"I don't do it," she says, lifting her head, catching Asami's gaze, "Tenchu does."

Asami is quiet again, wide-eyed and drawn. Her dark hair is dusted with snow, crisp flakes that melt into a gleam of water.

"But…"

Asami reaches out, gently, and Korra still finds herself leaning away; she stiffens and Asami presses her fingers to Korra's split lip and turns her hand over, letting the drops of coppery blood darken the fabric of her gloves. She drops her hand and looks down the empty street, sighing with a sort of hopeless resignation.

They crunch footprints into the snowy asphalt, and Korra can feel Asami thinking, thinking, thinking behind her - thinking about what?_ But what?_ she wants to ask, but doesn't.

* * *

It's almost three in the morning by the time they reach the Sato mansion, the motorcycle engine stuttering to a lazy stop, and Korra tilts all the weight onto her outstretched leg as Asami unwraps her arms and slides off. The cut in her uniform filled with snow and wind as they rode through the city and the chill slips into her, shining like steel in her bones.

The lamps on either side of the front doors are bright and yellow and Asami's silhouette is dark against the flow of light, still in the Equalist uniform. She slowly climbs the steps, one at a time...

"Asami, wait, hold on," she calls out, stumbling off the motorcycle and letting it crash to the driveway, and Korra runs the steps to where Asami is waiting for her, wearing a lofty look of stoicism.

"I just…" she starts, and trails off; this is the second time she's run after someone and had nothing to say. A minute passes, long and slow, filling with snow. Asami draws herself up, tall and regal, the light behind her darkening her face.

"You know, I'm trying to understand, I really am - but right now, you need to just go home," Asami says, and she marches to the front door, heaves it open, and leaves Korra standing on the steps.

She sits there for a while; arms on her knees, watching the snow. Little flakes that wink out of the light, vanishing like the earliest dreams of sleep. She lifts a hand and a flurry of snow uncurls out of the air, slips around her fingers as water. The cold burns and seizes her skin and Korra offers it back to the night with an upturned palm; the snow feathers off and disappears. Some things build without a sound, steady and unfelt, unnoticed until immovable.

And it would be nice just to sit, and not be alone -

Korra stands up and trots around to the back of the mansion, to Hiroshi's workshop, and she doesn't care that it's late, that there are always people in the factory. No one will question her. And she follows herself, some unspoken thought, all the way down to the factory, down the staircase, into the warehouse; and then across the warehouse floor to the prison hallway, where a single lit bulb casts a grey light on the walls.

Mako and Bolin are fast asleep again. Bolin is curled around the pillow, Pabu in the curve of his body; and Mako with his forearm over his eyes, like he's trying not to see.

"Hey," she whispers, "guys. Wake up."

Mako's arm jerks slightly, but otherwise they don't move. Korra fidgets - maybe this was a bad idea -

"Hey, Mako," she says, louder. He wakes up with a start, eyes flying open, hand hardening into a fist.

"Korra! What's going on?" he says in a strained whisper, as she tilts the Tenchu mask up to the top of her head, and Bolin starts to shift and mumble. Mako sits up and quiets him, leans over and mutters into his ear - _don't know - handle this - back to sleep_. He rolls out of bed and pads over to Korra, tugging a shirt over his head and resting his arms on the horizontal bar.

"So what's the big ide - are you okay?! What happened to your lip?" he says, squinting at her, and Korra touches the cut; scabbed and hard from the cold. His face is bruised, with a dapple of purple-blue.

"Oh, I just got in a fight with some triads thugs, no big deal," she says, shrugging it off, and he just looks at her.

"I'm not going to ask," he says, "but - what're you doing down here? Does he know you're here?"

A shiver takes Korra, thrills up her spine; she hadn't even thought about that. If Noatak knew she were here… he can't. He won't. Korra takes a step back

"Sorry. I should leave," Korra says, "Forget I came - " but Mako halts her mid-step by reaching through the bars and putting a hand on her shoulder. She stops and goes rigid, a stony air filling her lungs, as he finds the tear in the uniform, his fingertips hot on her skin.

"Spirits, you're freezing," he says, "can you open the door?"

"Why?"

"'Cause I'm a firebender," he says, and Korra side-eyes him even as she fumbles for the keys from the inner pocket in her uniform. He moves aside as she unlocks the cell door and slides it open, just enough for him to step through.

"I do this for Bolin all the time," Mako adds, and she doesn't even have time to ask do what before he hugs her, wraps his arms around her and pulls her in close, her hands up and pressed to his chest in defense because he - because Mako -

He's so warm.

He is so _warm_ and Korra eases onto him as she starts to feel weightless, the warmth pooling through her, melting away all the frost on her thoughts. She wants to sink into him, be this warm forever; and he smells like kicked-up autumn leaves, smoky-rich and dry. The cold shudders out with a bitter tremble and Korra rests her head on him, feeling found. She didn't know she wanted this, that her heart ached for the mere simplicity of being held.

There's a hot, wet stain in her vision, heaviness in her throat; and so Korra sniffs and breaks away, wiping her eyes, staring at the floor next to his feet.

"Hey, you okay?" Mako says, his hand on her shoulder, tilting over to look at her; and Korra gives him a half-hearted laugh and nods.

"Yeah, I'm fine, don't worry about me," she says, even as she blots water from her eyes, and he laughs and shakes his head.

"No offense, but your 'fine' looks terrible," Mako says, and she tugs her hood around to wipe her face dry. And he smiles his slim, shy smile at her, waiting for her to say something.

"I came down here because - because I want you to teach me some firebending," Korra mutters, gesturing vaguely at his hands, and Mako raises his eyebrows.

"_Yeah_," he says, after a long pause, "okay. I'll teach you a trick. For breath control."

He cups his hands and looks around, searching for something; Mako passes over her and then his gaze swerves back, holding hers. He's still smiling, concentrating - a flame blossoms in his hands, a teardrop of fire, a robust, flowering yellow. In the dim light it casts their shadows on the walls, and the dark shapes shift and stretch as the fire shivers over his palms.

"Your eyes are blue," Mako says, and takes a deep, relaxed breath, his chest rolling up; "but not just blue, they're more like…"

The fire in his hands flickers and melts into a glowing shade of blue, the warmest blue she has ever seen; the blue of the sky in summer, sunlight in ice, the fresh touch of early morning and sound of free laughter.

"…more like a bittersweet, match-struck blue," Mako says, and even as he says it she can see him blush. He tips his hands forward, tumbling the fire into hers as she moves to catch it.

"Well, aren't you a poet," she says, as she stares into the little blue fire, heat pulsing into her palms, a heart beating bare and raw.

He makes a wry face.

"Even 'firebending thugs' can say nice things, you know - " and Korra pops her cheeks out and blows a raspberry.

"Hey, _come on_ - fine, I want my fire back," he jokes, deftly scooping it out of her hands, "you make your own. Um, pick any color that fire can make, and try to match it."

"Okay," Korra breathes, "let's see…" and she knows just what color she wants to try: the sweet honey in his eyes, full of sun, and she glances up to capture it just right. She makes a flame and it blinks once, twice… maybe just a shade off. He presses on her fingertips to lower her hands, see better - close, so close, close enough - Mako grins at her.

"Perfect," he says, as the fire ripples on itself, tapered and plump like a puckered lily.

"Mako, I don't know what to do," Korra murmurs, and the words crack in the middle. His eyes flick to hers, briefly, gleaming with firelight.

"Whatever you want to do, it's your fire," he says, in a voice full of calm. Mako is patient, so patient with her - whatever she wants to do. Strange thought.

He's exhausted. She can see it written on him, smudged like ink, a word he cannot bring himself to speak aloud, and Korra knows what it's like. It's a relentless, hourless drag, being bruised by your desires as you force them out, hiding yourself behind the face of all the things you have to do - _prove it_, he'd snarled, and he said he would _handle this_ - she's not being _handled_, is she - ?

The fire collapses and goes out with a puff as she drops her hands.

"I have to go," she announces, and jerks her head towards the cell.

"Korra," Mako says, but she shoves the mask down over her face and crosses her arms so that he can't come any closer.

Mako sighs, one hand on his hip, and doesn't resist much when she grunts in frustration and pushes him back inside the cell, a little harder than she means.

* * *

Finally Korra makes it home, flops facedown onto the couch, all sore and cold again, angry with Asami and Mako and Bolin, all of them. She doesn't have to prove shit to them; they can stay pressed for all she cares. Noatak isn't home yet so she falls asleep with all the lights on, has weird dreams of great creatures moving under the water, ageless beasts that fade out of fragile sight, dark and powerful and bristling with wisdom that grows on them, clings jealous to them, creatures that drag the waves of the sea like white threads on blue silk, the world wrinkles under their touch, they lift a god-hand and things come together -

And a man kneeling before her, high above a red sea of burning stones, her hands pulling power from him in threads of white. A face that startles her, a boyish, compassionate face belonging to a man with sorrowful grey eyes, wielding his mercy like a staff. And it comes so clearly to her - merciful even in the face of a corrupted power, even when everyone he'd ever loved had been cut away from him by a hundred years of howling violence.

_But it's different,_ she wants to say, and Aang says _yes, they are just as lost as you are, thrown into a war she does not understand, staying strong because they must, it's all they have left -_

Amon shakes her awake and she mumbles as she opens her eyes; her mouth is coated in the sticky tasteless of unfinished sleep. Her mask dropped from her hand as she slept and now it lies on the carpet, staring with blank eyes.

"Don't sleep on the couch, Korra, and go change out of those clothes," he says, and she groans and turns away from him, staring into the couch cushions, listening to him move around the apartment, washing his face, the distant muffle of him removing his uniform.

Noatak comes back to the living room and she lifts herself, feeling the stretch-pop of sore muscles and stiff bones, as he stops in the middle of the carpet and stares at her, arms crossed.

"Daddy, I don't wanna debrief right now," Korra says, sitting up, and he rolls his eyes and holds his hand out, palm down.

"Fine, no debrief," Noatak says, "but up. Bed. Now."

She takes him by the wrist and pulls, firmly; it's not a nice gesture but she's not in the mood to be nice with him. He leans in, face inches from hers, and she glares at him, at the spots of make-up he missed, burnt pink-reds, chalky and damp.

"Dad, listen," she starts, tightening her grip on his wrist, and his face hardens with suspicion.

"What, Korra?"

"I'm tired of being angry at you all the time," Korra says.

Noatak blinks, eyes fluttering, and then he huffs in exasperation.

"Forgive me, child," he says, "but I have no idea what you're talking about."

She doesn't miss the sharp cut of sarcasm but she doesn't care. He is her father; Korra knows how to love him and she knows how to hurt him.

"Do you want me to be happy?"

"Of course I do, but what is this about - " and Noatak moves his hand up to her face, to cradle it, smooth out the bristles in her tone, but she wants none of that right now and takes that hand too. Clasps both of them in the space between them, holding them with her thumbs pressed into his palms, denting the skin on the backs. Her anger burns and she is full of ashes. Whatever she wants to do, it's her fire -

"Then stop hurting Mako and Bolin," Korra says, and when he tries to move his hands out of her grasp she merely tightens her grip. More than his voice, more than his schemes, more than the spirit of vengeance he crafted from a mask and an idea, everything he does is in his hands, and he can't have them back just yet.

"You're speaking nonse - "

"I don't want to be angry with you anymore, Dad, it makes it hard to love you."

His eyes widen and there is a breathless, composed silence.

"Alright," Noatak says, and she lets go.

* * *

UGHHH THIS CHAPTER I LOVE IT SO MUCH

i love writing this so much wow

i wrote meta for this chapter over at pulpofiction dot tumblr dot com so you should go take a look 'cause i put a lot of thought into this and all the scenes. chapter 8 returns in january.

all reviews/PMs/commentary appreciated! take me to 100, y'all, I believe in you


	10. Encounters, Sunlight

**A/N:** I'M ALIVE AND STILL UPDATING L O LLLL hahahaa blame college.

enjoy my dear readers

* * *

**I. ENCOUNTERS**

Things Korra knows: Equalism, chi-blocking, the location of each chakra like secrets she has hidden herself; what fire and earth are (poetry in a language she is just beginning to speak), cracked, dry-skinned anger. The hopeful longing of waking up with the warmth of someone else, but only the idea of it, a whisper, lingering like a half-heard tune. And her father, she knows her father - oceanic endurance, the invulnerability of winter. His expression carved in stone as he hammers power into himself, palms braced against the floor, muscles rolling in his arms and back, weakness dripping from his skin as he counts:_eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine…_ And then he turns over, bends his knees, arms crossed to his shoulders, and begins a new set. Every morning. Strength requires clockwork discipline.

Things she doesn't know: the tone in Noatak's voice when, as she is definitely not using firebending to light the burners for breakfast, there is an _agh!_ and a muffled _thump _and then her name -

"Korra?! Korra!"

It's colored with a pale hint of panic that she splashes over with her own worries and so she runs to Noatak's room, fingertips smoking, and throws the door open. This, also, Korra doesn't know: Noatak, lying almost face-down, twisted against the floor like he tried to throw himself into it. And, on his face, what she has never known in him - a wincing pain.

"Dad, what happened? You alright?!" she asks, her heart plummeting at the sudden thought that Dad, her daddy, iron-muscled, glacier-willed Daddy, is not limitless. His own body can betray him.

"Threw out my back," Noatak splutters into the carpet, "can't move. Help me get up."

_Help_: since when does he need that? Korra drops to her knees and slings his arm across her shoulders. He groans and curses under his breath.

"So are you getting old or what?" Korra asks, securing his weight and wrapping her arm around his waist, and he chuckles darkly.

"None of your lip," Noatak mutters, and groans again as Korra staggers to her feet on the count of _one, two, three_ -

"Back to bed, you crotchety old geezer," Korra says, as she heaves him onto his bed. He tumbles in with a flump and flattens with a morose look, the very image of frustrated martyrdom, withheld from his glorious mission by something as stupidly simple as _back pain_.

"Oh, shut up," he says into the pillow, "and bring me ice. Wrap it in a towel."

She dutifully goes to retrieve ice from the icebox and brings it wrapped in terrycloth, resting it in the small of his back. Noatak sighs with relief as the cloth of his shirt darkens, drops of water glistening off the block of ice.

"Why don't you just heal it?" Korra asks, leaning over, drawing water from his shirt and re-freezing it to the ice; she's itching to try…

Noatak rubs his nose and gives her a thoughtful look, colorless with fatigue.

"I think," he says, "I will humor my aching muscle, and take a day off."

(Also unknown: vacations of any kind. Revolutions demand relentless early mornings, and mornings are _evil_.)

Korra pokes him gleefully in the side, making him twitch, and he flinches.

"So am I in charge? I'm staging a coup. First order of business: I'm top billing on all the posters - "

"Over my dead body," Noatak snorts, which isn't funny to her at _all_ as she studies his immobilized frame, the shallow ridges of muscle and bone under his shirt, the hard bridge of his nose. All of him packed in dense and solid and trapped in the painful tangle of something torn out of place, and no matter how much she throws herself against him, a bird against a cage, she's not ready to think about…

"Well at any rate, you're here all day, but what am I supposed to do?" Korra says, "you want tea? A book? The newspaper? The radio? Uh, cigarettes? The Lieutenant? Briefings? Airship diagnostics?"

"Insufferable child," he mutters, "leave me in peace!"

Korra smirks and thumps Noatak in the head with a pillow.

"Sure thing, Dad, I think I'll go work on my coup. Take it easy, I don't want your leg to fall off or anything."

"Mmh," he says, and when he doesn't say anything else, Korra tiptoes out the door. He is a minute of silence away from sleep.

Outside the sky is a sharp crystalline blue, scoured clean of smog and urban grit by long days of snow. The street is white, the buildings a dark, wet grey; Satomobiles leave blackened braids on the slush as they roll through, trailing feathers of exhaust smoke.

Korra rests on the balcony railing and exhales into the air, watching it mix with the steam rising from the round surface of her mug of tea, and stares down the street, at the shining coal-blue chips of sea just visible beyond the flat roofs of tenement buildings. If she monkeys over the top of the fire escape, scrambles onto the roof (left foot in a hollow of carved-in brick, and haul up with a hand in the gutter) and hugs the chimney to hang way out, ten stories over the street, she can see Avatar Aang Memorial Island.

So she does, with a backwards glance towards Noatak's closed bedroom door. And with one arm firmly wrapped around the chimney, Korra leans out over mid-air, feet finding purchase in the ice-filled rain gutter, and finds the island, with the statue's serene, boyish face, stomping a lotus into the harbor.

Korra thought the view would be more breathtaking, seen through the new lens of knowing she's the Avatar, but it isn't. It's the same as always. Korra grimaces at the statue, the cold breeze lashing, licking at her hair, the bare skin on her hands and face.

"Hey, you," she shouts, "your staff looks like _candy!_"

No answer from the statue. It's silent, and she expected this, but she's tired of silence, of unanswered questions, of dreams that linger without ending; the things her father doesn't say in the space between his mouth and his mask. A statue, a face that never changes - she grits her teeth on a surge of ire.

"Why do you keep sending me weird dreams, huh? I know it's you! Stop sending me that stuff, I don't even want to be the Avatar!" Korra yells, her words snagging in the wind, and she clings to the chimney as her foot loses friction on the ice and snap-slips out from under her.

Underneath her, there is the sound of a window opening, and she looks down as a shaggy-haired, matronly woman pokes her head out the window and looks up.

"Shut up and quit yelling! And get down from there before you fall!" she calls out, and Korra rolls her eyes.

"Don't interrupt, there are important… spiritual _things_ going on up here!" she calls back, and the woman scowls.

"Are you the girl from 704? With that father of yours? Always clomping around on the roof? I have half a mind to complain to Kyung!"

"You do that, my dad won't care," Korra says, "don't you know he's Amon?"

The woman makes a scathing noise and withdraws, punctuating her disgust with a loud slam of her window. Korra shrugs and turns back to the statue as the scent of the sea rises, salty-cool, laced into the wind.

Off in the distance, a steamship cuts through the harbor waves, a white and red fleck pulling a black thread of smoke, and Korra sighs.

"No, but really, I need more. I don't get any of this stuff," Korra mutters, "and I'm not going to ask him, he's going to go off about _bending is violence_ and _oh_, _you hafta_ _redeem yourself _again, or whatever…." she finishes, and rubs her neck, trying to feel out a unexpected dull ache, the bitterness sliding down the back of her mouth.

The breeze takes her breath, pulls her hair into whips, shifts like the rhythm of a sarabande. She flinches as something whacks her in the face.

"Ow! What the - ?"

A leaf, pressed to her by the wind, and Korra holds it out - a veiny green spade. The wind yanks it from her hand and flings it over and out, past the rooftops - it disappears as a flash of green towards a distant glint of gold and white. Korra raises her hands and lifts herself to the top of the chimney, her hips pressing into the brick edge -

"Yeah, you know what, I'll just go with that," Korra says, and the wind picks up again as a playful smack of air. She splutters hair from her mouth and drops from the chimney onto the rooftop, dusting ash off her clothes. The winter sunlight breaking on the sea hollows her out, fills her again with an unknown, rising hope. Air Temple Island it is.

Korra checks in on Noatak. He's sound asleep and she reaches out with tentative fingers, brushing hair from his face, frowning. This father of hers. She can't imagine he'd be pleased with her plan… and it was always a bad idea to anger him.

"Hey Dad, if you don't want me to go to Air Temple Island, say something," she murmurs. The silence hangs still in the warm air, with clear waves of heat spilling from the white-ribbed radiator on the wall, and the sprawl of his sleeping body seems suspended in a quiet, rhythmic breathlessness.

He shifts, hums a single, short note - _mmh_ - and Korra makes a face, crinkles her nose; her tongue lolling out. Even unconscious, he's a pain.

"Too bad," she says under her breath, "I think I'll go anyway."

She leaves a bowl of noodles in broth on his bedside table; burrows into his jacket for his tobacco and rolling papers and leaves those too. And then she leaves a note, folded under the bowl: GONE OUT - BE BACK TONIGHT - LOVE, KORRA. He wouldn't want her to stick around all day to play nursemaid.

And then - one last thing, in the family room, twirling and un-twirling the telephone cord with her finger, the receiver cool and heavy in her hand, round edge pressed to the side of her mouth. The ringing of the phone on the other end comes through high-pitched and soft, _doot doot doot_, and Korra holds her breath without realizing it, hoping without knowing why, it's all such a mess -

"Hello, Sato residence."

Asami comes through clear and cheerful and Korra exhales forcefully; she didn't expect Asami herself to pick up.

"Hey, Asami, it's me," Korra says, with her heart fluttering in her throat, and on the other end of the line she can hear - no, feel - Asami's expression, lips pursed, eyes narrowed.

"Hi, Korra," Asami says, and her voice is flat. Understandable. Korra swallows and paces a half-step, tangling herself in the phone cord, and throws her head back to glare at the ceiling, trying to pull the words out of her mind sludge.

"Uh, do you wanna go somewhere with me today?" she asks, and the words tumble out breathless and rapid.

"What? Go somewhere? Go _where_?

Asami is accusatory, her voice falling sharply on the syllables, and it's all too easy to imagine her scowling at the phone, the hard set of her mouth

"To Air Temple Island," Korra says

There's a long silence on the other end and Korra huffs and tosses the phone cord away from her in frustration, shoving her free hand into her coat pocket.

"Who's asking?" Asami says, and Korra thinks about her mask, in its suede bag, tucked into the back of her dresser. But she shoves Tenchu out.

"Me. I'm asking. It's not Equalist stuff; it's for me. Asami, I - I just - I need you to come with me," Korra says, with a heavy sigh, dragging a cool down her face, and brushing back across her hair, "Are you busy? Do you think - ?"

"Yeah…yeah, sure. What time?" Asami says, and Korra almost laughs in relief. She won't have to go alone. It's so stupid, so simple, so unwieldy a feeling, but she can't help it; it warms her like a spring breeze after a long winter. Loneliness means nothing until it's all you have.

The wind is even colder as it howls across the bay, tearing at their clothes and hair with chilled fingers, and Korra and Asami trot down the dock as quickly as possible, slouching into their coats, tugging the lapels to their cheeks, boots clunking on the wooden planks. Before them, Air Temple Island rises solid and square out of the sea, shrubberies clinging to the cliff face as the wind tugs them and the long staircase twisting and turning sharply across the rocks. The golden top of the pagoda gleams in the stark sunlight and Korra squints against the wind, blinking; if she turns her head to the left, the statue is there, off-angle to her, bearing down on the city over a white-capped sea.

"So are we just going to look around?" Asami says, her hair and scarf billowing like a banner, and Korra shrugs, nonchalant, but it's practiced - she sees Asami through a glass, fragile and paper-thin, doesn't know if she should break it down or brick it up.

"I dunno. I don't know how to airbend, so I thought I'd… just… ask," Korra says, lamely, as Asami fixes her with a skeptical look.

"Yeah, it's not exactly a thought-out plan," Korra says, shoving her hands into her pockets and scuffing the dock with her heel. Noatak would've had everything lined up, all his turtle-ducks in a row, no tears or rips in his net of schemes.

"Let's say we're thinking about joining the air acolytes," Asami says, after a moment of frowning up at the Air Temple complex, "I bet they get that all the time."

"Yeah, but I bet they don't get Avatars all the time," Korra mutters, "especially, you know, Avatars on the wanted list."

Asami laughs, openly, a sound like a bird flown from a cage, and smiles at Korra, still bracing against the wind in her black and red coat. The ferry trip had been awkward -_how's your dad, he's fine, it's cold isn't it, yeah it's really cold, I can't wait for spring_and Korra had let all the things she wanted to say slip from her chilled fingers, sink into the harbor, disappear under the dark green waves as the prow of the boat dipped and rose:_ I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm doing, I want to tell you about Mako and Bolin -_later. And now Korra feels a little bit less cold, feels the glass crack.

"I wouldn't worry about that," Asami says, "they don't have any idea…"

She turns up the dock towards the staircase as Korra follows; her mood is opening like a sail, broad and light. They're just about off the dock, right where the wooden planks halt on the stone walkway, when a bright orange and yellow blur barrels out of the sky and tumbles to a stop at Korra's feet, wind-blown and grinning furiously.

"Hi," the girl says, jumping up with a spry bounce, as the wind tugs loose strands out of the twin buns in her hair, "who're you?"

Korra pulls up short with Asami. The girl has a toothy smile and a face that beams; eyes that blink with the beady curiosity of a pigeon.

"Uh - My name is - " she starts, but another blur - two of them - drop to the walkway next to the first girl; another girl, taller and older, snaps her glider staff shut with a purposeful thwack and stands in front of Korra and Asami, considering them with narrow, unimpressed eyes. And the final blur, a small shaven boy with a misshapen head, with huge eyes and a snub nose, grins at Asami and tucks his hands behind his back, fidgeting and tucking his chin to his chest.

"Who are _you?_" says the tall girl, lifting one eyebrow, and Korra wants to laugh. She's so serious.

"I dunno," she snipes, "who are you_?_"

"I asked you first," the girl returns, holding the staff out and pointing it into Korra's face, and Korra bats it away with an unconcerned gesture. _Pfft_.

"I'm not telling unless _you_ tell!"

Asami cuts in, with a studiously measured tone: "She's Korra, I'm Asami, and we want to learn about airbending… are you all airbenders?"

The older girl sniffs and rolls her shoulders back, slim and proud. Korra is surprised the wind hasn't carried them all away. They're small and light-footed, orange and yellow sparrows tilting their heads at Korra and Asami with quirky interest.

"Yeah, we _are_ all airbenders, and I'm Jinora and that's Ikki and that's Meelo," Jinora says, the names hurtling out, "and if you want to learn about airbending you have to talk to my dad. _He's_ in charge."

She says it in a dry, lofty tone - he's in charge only because she's not - and Korra grins.

"Ok, where's your dad?" Asami says, and Jinora steps aside and points her staff up the stairs to the top of the island.

"Alright, then let's go," Asami says, taking off with a brisk walk; Korra falls in line with her as the children skip around them and walk backwards on hopping steps.

"So why do you wanna learn about airbending? Do you wanna be an acolyte?" Ikki says, at a furiously high pitch, and Korra opens her mouth, only to find she has no ready lie available - it doesn't matter because Ikki pauses for half a second and then keeps going.

"We have lots of acolytes but they don't all have air bison. You can't have an air bison because you're not an air acolyte and also you can't really have air bison because animals are supposed to be free and it's wrong to own a living thing so no one can have an air bison," Ikki says, bouncing from one foot to the other, and Asami and Korra exchange looks, trying not to laugh.

"And I don't think you can get tattoos because only airbenders get tattoos and we're the only airbenders! Except I want pink tattoos but Daddy says they have to be blue because of our cululcheral hiz dory," Ikki rattles, and Jinora frowns at her as she thwacks her staff at pockets of snow along the stone steps of the cliff face.

"You mean 'cultural history,'" she corrects, and Ikki scrunches her face, her mouth bunching up under her nose.

Asami snorts into her hand as they climb the steps, smirking at Korra, and Korra grins.

"I think pink tattoos would look awesome," she says, "what about you, pal? You gonna get pink tattoos?"

She nudges Meelo on the shoulder and he startles - he hasn't stopped looking at Asami with his wide eyes, shining like fresh change.

"I want some of your hair," he says, and Asami misses a step as Korra barks with laughter. She reaches out and fluffs Asami's hair, flipping the curls around Asami's shoulder; they're cool from the wind, shining and catching the light.

"Who doesn't want Asami's hair," she says, "right?"

Jinora turns around, her staff across her shoulders, her expression bright.

"Do you have boyfriends?" she asks in a chipper voice, and Korra is suddenly in the warehouse, with Mako, during their last firebending lesson: his hand on her wrist, thumb in her palm. He didn't even say anything, just swept her hand through the air in his, with all the lightness of bamboo. Her skin was cold and his fingers were hot and the space where they met snapped with sparks as then she cut a crescent of fire through the air and he smiled. In his language, that was a speech.

"No," Korra says, "he's - no boyfriend. Just… boys. Who are, uh… friends."

Jinora nods in mock understanding.

"'Boys who are friends,'" she repeats sagely, and looks slightly crestfallen, her lower lip curling out.

"What kind of boys?" Ikki pipes in, and Asami turns to Korra.

"Yeah, what kind of boys…?" she asks, and the accusatory note returns, drawn out on the clap of her tongue at the 'k'. Korra scratches the back of her head, trails her gaze towards the sea. She needs to watch what she says. Mako and Bolin are safe in secrecy, where only she can reach them, only she can protect them. Their names are heavy with risk and so she lets them sink.

"Friendly boys," Korra says, with a touch of desperation, "hey, what are you, like nine? Boys have cooties, stay away from them."

"Actually, I'm ten," Jinora says, "and boys don't have cooties. Cooties are a myth and a lie. Boys are annoying at worst and only sometimes do they have lice."

"I'm done," Korra mutters to Asami, who can't contain her smile.

"Tell me more later, I want to hear about these boys who are friends," she says under her breath, and Korra heaves a conciliatory sigh. She might as well.

They reach the top of the staircase and Korra looks up as they pass under the tallest of the three gates, swept clean and buffed shiny by the winter sea winds; each footstep further onto the veranda feels like wading into deeper waters and suddenly she is anxious - a sluggish bubble in her gut that creeps up to her throat and sticks - what is she doing here? If he found out she came, if he found out she set out to go learn bending, and _airbending_ of all things… She could kick herself, how stupid, how impulsive, how dangerous - if she messed up, if they found out, who would suffer for her mistakes next - ? Asami walks ahead, calm and unhurt -

Korra turns on her heel - time to leave - and sees the statue, gazing down on the city.

A second passes, and then another, and Korra narrows her eyes at Avatar Aang.

"Well, if you're gonna just _stand_ there," she mutters, clenching her teeth, and turns around. Just ahead of her, Ikki and Meelo are peppering Asami with questions about her opinions on different colors, and Jinora is listening with a serene look of disinterest. And at the far end of the veranda, three figures, walking towards them, tall and purposeful and deep in conversation…

"There's my dad," Jinora says, "with Councilman Tarrlok and Chief Bei Fong - "

"Weird ponytail man and the metal lady," Ikki bubbles, beaming.

" - Councilman Tarrlok and Chief Bei Fong - " Jinora says again, and Asami stops short, mid-step, as Korra grabs her elbow. Shit. Tarrlok is here. And the police chief. Shit. _Shit_.

"What…?" Asami starts, and Korra tugs at Asami's scarf, loosening it from her neck, as the trio of figures comes closer, Tenzin towering and imposing in the middle, arguing visibly with Tarrlok, Bei Fong wearing an iron-grey expression, her arms crossed. They haven't noticed Asami and Korra yet, thank the spirits - Korra whips the scarf off Asami's neck and, in a swift, fluid motion, tosses it into the air. The wind catches it and carries it away, just like the leaf from this morning, far away from the rapidly approaching figures. Korra gasps dramatically and whirls, her hands rising like wings.

"Asami, your scarf!" she cries out, sprinting after it, as it rolls playfully across the stone, pushed along by the wind. And just as she reaches it, the wind pulls it from her fingertips, throws its several yard away, and she stumbles after it again. It snags on a shrubbery on the edge of the veranda and Korra trots over.

She looks over her shoulder as she untangles the scarf from the bush - Tarrlok and Chief Bei Fong should be just under the gates, and she'll safe - but Asami looks pale, her expression tight as Tarrlok stops to talk to her. Korra swallows as her heartbeat thuds through her breast, and she takes a deep breath, clutching the scarf in her fist - he's a bloodbender, he'll feel her heartbeat like its drumming on him… another deep breath, held for a long five seconds, and she exhales in a single slow sigh as she walks over to Asami and Tarrlok. Tenzin and Bei Fong stand just a bit away, waiting in frosty politeness.

"Here's your scarf," Korra says, and she swats at the dust and picks a twig out of the fringe, offers it to Asami. Asami takes it from her without looking, staring at Tarrlok, an odd smile on her face.

" - would _love_ to see you and your father at my next charity dinner," Tarrlok says, in a smooth, affable voice, but Korra feels each word crawl up her skin. "You would brighten the evening just by making an appearance."

Asami laughs, a single, strained, high-pitched _hah!_, and evidently this is enough for Tarrlok. He turns to Korra with upturned eyebrows, beaming slightly.

"And who is this charming young lady?"

Korra bristles, biting on the inside of her lip to keep her smile from breaking apart.

"Uhhhh….gyuk," she says, seizing on the first name that comes to mind; "yeah. My name is Ugyuk."

"I thought your name was Ko - " Ikki starts, loudly, and Asami shoves Ikki behind her with a radiant smile. Tarrlok nods approvingly at a Korra, as though the name were a sip of fine wine, and his sleek expression, his finely tailored blue coat, the reek of some flowery cologne, his entire mannerism makes her insides twist and crumple on each other. She knows what he's like. So wearing masks runs in the family, then.

What happened between them - ?

"Pleasure to meet you, Ugyuk; and what brings you to Air Temple Island on this fine day?"

"Sight-seeing," Korra says in a firm voice, "Asami is taking me sight-seeing. Because, um. I'm new in town. From… South Pole."

"Oh, well, then allow me to be your host! I am always delighted to show the wonders of our beautiful city to fine new citizens such as yourself," Tarrlok says, and Korra wants to grab him by the shoulders and scream with laughter at him: _if my father didn't fucking need you then I don't either you oily slugamander_

"Thanks, but I think Asami's got it covered," Korra says, crossing her arms and tilting her hips, because she can't imagine a more stupid idea than traipsing around the city with Tarrlok as her guide.

"A shame!" he blusters with enthusiasm, and Korra can't help but snort.

"Deal with it," she mutters; under her breath; and Tarrlok stops, the smoothness of his face abruptly turning still. He freezes slowly as something icy and narrow comes over him -

"…but you're in good hands. Miss Sato is a lovely friend to have. Always does the right thing," Tarrlok continues in a cheerful tone, tilting his head in deference to Asami, and a few yards away Tenzin harrumphs loudly as Lin grows stonier and stonier.

"I'm sure she does. Um, I have to… use the bathroom now, but it was nice meeting you, Councilman Tarrlok," Korra says, just as Tenzin steps closer and reaches out to tap Tarrlok on the shoulder, and she almost stumbles right into Asami in her haste to get away.

"Of course, anyti - _yes_, Tenzin. As I was saying, despite what your esteemed mother says, we can safely dismiss this as a madwoman's tale… "

Their voices fade as Korra and Asami trot away, their boots clacking on the pavement, Asami's hair bouncing with every step. Korra throws a quick look over her shoulder to Tarrlok and Tenzin - the look on Tarrlok's face is too familiar: a glacial disdain, slow-moving and arrogant, suddenly more ice than water. But you can't politick on charm alone. And she's struck with a bizarre sense of pride… the blood in her veins is rich and strong, running stronger than currents in the sea…

"He tried to arrest me a few weeks ago," she whispers to Asami, leaning in close, and Asami nods.

They reach the far end of the veranda and decide to settle on the portico steps to wait for Tenzin to return, watching the air children - who have long since lost interest in them - spinning whirling spheres of wind out of nothing and zooming around the veranda, giggling and laughing.

"So tell me about these boys," Asami says, after a moment's silence in the chill sunshine, leaning back on a step with her elbows propping her up. Korra rubs her face with both hands and slouches over her knees, flicking a speck of gravel off the step. Where does she even start? Mako and Bolin are - Bolin is sweet, every word from him is a candied nut, crunchy and sugary, and Mako is… his back turned to her, vanishing white into the darkness of the cell after she shoves him away, while his smile still warms her.

"They're benders," she says in a low tone, "Mako and Bolin. They teach me fire- and earthbending. My dad and I took them prisoner."

Asami jerks upright, her eyes wide.

"What?!" she says, "Korra! You can't - "

Korra rounds on her, swift and angry; she doesn't want to hear any of whatever Asami's about to say. Asami hasn't seen Bolin's burn, heard him scream, hasn't had Mako broken and sobbing into her shirt, hasn't heard the dull, thick _thwack_ of Noatak's fist cracking into Mako's face.

"I can," she snarls, "and they're mine. They're mine and if it weren't for me, they'd be dead."

Asami's mouth hangs open, full of unvoiced thoughts. Korra goes _tch_ and lets her gaze drift to the shrubberies, to each tiny teardrop of a leaf quivering in the breeze; she wants to pluck them all and follow them. But she's more branch than leaf and so she sighs, dipping her chin into her palm and glancing back at Asami, whose lips are still parted in a slack pout.

"I'll take you to meet them later," Korra mumbles, "they're under your house."

Asami's expression twists with disbelief.

"Are you ser - " she starts, but Korra stands up, dusts off the front of her pants, rolls her shoulders back; Tenzin is walking up the veranda again, alone, a bright orange and yellow figure sharp against the sun-pale tableau of grey skyscrapers and snow-covered mountains.

Ikki barrels into him on her air scooter and he promptly sweeps her up, clean and simple; she hugs his head and Tenzin takes on a hangdog look of limitless patience.

And as he strides closer, robes flapping around him, Korra takes him in: he's… like her father, in stern posture and in the lines of his mouth, drawn for strong words and forceful talk, and already she doesn't want to disappoint him - but because she doesn't want him to be sad, instead of angry… and the corners of his eyes, the wrinkles there, from smiling instead of scowling.

"Welcome to Air Temple Island," he says, bowing forward to Korra, and she returns the gesture. "I'm Councilman Tenzin, the elder of this temple. How can I help you?"

**II. SUNLIGHT/manipura**

It's easy to sneak Asami into the underground, both of them matching in Equalist uniforms, and their footsteps are soft all the way down the staircase behind the wall and across the warehouse floor, past the stacks of crates and the Tenchu banner on the wall. It seems quieter than normal, the silence heavier, but maybe it's because Noatak isn't there, with the unbearable loudness of his presence. Korra readjusts the paper bag full of food in her arm as she steps over an odd ripple of concrete, smiling to herself. Bolin's handiwork, tearing the earth apart like paper.

"I still can't believe there are people down here," Asami breathes, her voice muffled in the Equalist mask, and Korra wants to shrug it off.

But she doesn't; she just slowly opens the door into the prison hallway and squints into the dim light, listening for their voices. It's only mid-afternoon, the hours crawling towards dusk, so Mako and Bolin should be awake, and she wonders what've they been doing all day, just waiting, waiting, waiting… Korra swallows, pulling off the Equalist facemask, and motions for Asami to follow her.

"This way," she says, and they take slow, casual steps towards the far end of the hallway, to the third cell.

"Hey, guys, I have someone you should me - what's wrong with him?" Korra asks, as she unlocks the cell door. Bolin sits upright from his spot on the bed, shaking his head and blinking furiously, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, and he looks over his shoulder at his brother.

"Oh, he's fine," Bolin says cheerfully. Mako is sitting in the corner of the cell, his face ducked into the hollow between his chest and his drawn-up knees, his arms folded loosely on top. Korra goes to him, studying him for a second; his bare shoulders, slackened muscles, the scarf tucked around his neck, soft and full. She fights the urge to take his hand, to touch him, to bring him back from wherever he is, and pulls a snow plum out of the paper bag.

"Food. Eat," she says, shoving the snow plum into his mouth as he lifts his head, and he plucks it from her fingers, taking an eager bite.

"Thought you weren't coming today," he mutters, a drop of snow plum juice sliding down his lip, gleaming maroon, and Korra smirks.

"Sorry to disappoint, pal," she says, and Mako huffs indignantly.

"That's not - I didn't mean - not - " he starts, and stops when he looks up and sees her smiling, a faint blush stealing across his cheeks. Korra nudges him in the hip with her foot.

"Get up, I brought a friend," she says, and he nods and uncurls from his spot on the floor, rising to his feet, towering over Korra. Asami, who'd been clinging to the metal doorframe, watches them with an expression of something that looks like sadness, the color of a cold spring afternoon. Mako glances at her and his eyes widen, just a fraction.

"Uh, hi," Asami says, clearly ill at ease, and Korra's about to say something when Bolin hops off the bed and bows deeply, sweeping her into the cell.

"Welcome to our cell, Madam Equalist, the finest accommodations in Republic City," he says, in his best imitation of a snooty voice, and her face twists, torn between amusement and confusion.

"Oh, you can just call me Asami," she says, with a small half-smile, and Bolin grins.

"I'm Bolin," he says, jabbing his thumb into his chest, "and that's my brother, Mako - "

He nods his head back at Mako, who leans heavily against the wall, arms crossed, his expression hard, full of sharp angles and a dry wariness.

"Is it safe for her to be here?" he says, looking at Korra, and she shrugs, biting her lip - but she should have thought about that. If Noatak finds out Asami was down here… but Asami can handle herself.

"Safe enough," she says, "Dad's at home, he hurt his ba - uh, he took the day off."

"Wait, I know you guys," Asami says brightly, pointing a finger from Bolin to Mako, "you guys are the Fire Ferrets! You're the team captain! I watched all your games before you, um - before you - "

"Found new employment," Bolin offers, digging into the paper bag in Korra's arm and pulling out a snow plum of his own, "teaching Korra here how to bend."

"More like new employment found us," Mako says, under his breath, glaring at the floor, and Korra feels a twinge of bitter regret, tucking her chin to her shoulder. She doesn't even want to begin opening those wounds again, not while he is whole and clean and the scars are fading away silvery-pink, not while Noatak has been keeping his word - she startles with a small _hm?_ as Mako reaches out, thoughtlessly, to clap her on the head, mussing her hair over her eyes

"Can we get out of here? Go stretch our legs or something?" he says abruptly, dropping his hand; "I'm going crazy sitting around all day."

Korra blinks and stares; a waterfall of thoughts, incoherent and roaring together, thunders through her - Dad's at home, Mako is smart, Bolin is brave, they've overpowered her once before, they could escape, they could go, they could _leave_ - and the single word floating on the last small wave of the flood, loneliness…

And Tenzin's voice, the deep ring of a nostalgia-struck gong, echoes once. Just enough.

"Okay," Korra says, "okay, yeah. Let's go."

Mako smiles at her, his shoulders slouching, and maybe she should be used to it by now, when he does that, but she's not, she really isn't. It feels like the first hot day of summer on her skin, a warmth that rests on her with light and airy.

She loses her voice a little bit and lets Asami talk, lets Asami regale the boys with each thrilling play and stunning knock-out move of the pro-bending tournament, sketching each blow of earth and dart of fire in her husky tones. She merely leads the way out of the prison hallway and onto the warehouse floor, smiling to herself; they're an odd group - she and Asami in Equalist uniforms, soft-footed and armored up, Bolin and Mako in a motley assortment of their own clothes and hand-me-downs from Noatak's closet.

"…and wham, right into the pool," Asami says, "end of the match. Didn't even last five minutes."

Bolin gives a low whistle, his eyebrows rising dramatically.

"The Wolfbats are probably gonna take it again this year. I bet we could've handled them, with a good enough waterbender - right, bro?"

He nudges Mako in the side with his elbow and Mako snaps into an upright alertness.

"What? Oh, yeah. I guess so," he says with a shrug, rubbing the back of his head, and Asami waves his words out of the air.

"You two are great players, though, you would have made it to the championships for sure," she says, and Bolin lifts his hands palms-up with an immodest smirk.

"What can I say? Some of us are just naturally talented."

"Show me," Korra says, "can you guys show me some pro-bending? I've never been to a pro-bending match."

She lifts her fist, punches Mako lightly in the shoulder. It's easy with him.

"Come on, team captain," Korra says, and Mako looks at Bolin with raised eyebrows and a jerk of his head. So Bolin lifts Pabu from his shoulder and drops the ferret in Asami's surprised arms, and then takes long exaggerated dance steps away from them, to the middle of the warehouse floor, dragging his toes along the ground with arms spread wide.

Mako side-steps away from Korra and crouches, his fists cocked up in front of his head, and Korra pulls on Asami's elbow, moving them both away. Bolin cups a hand over his mouth and yells across the warehouse floor, his face shining with a simple happiness.

"You know the drill, big bro!"

"Launch it!" Mako calls back, and Bolin stomps his foot, breaking a disc of earth from the ground, and flings his arms back in a wide, aggressive throwing motion, sending the disc sailing through the air, spinning and shedding chips of concrete. Mako follows it with two outstretched fingers and then - with a single, robust punch, shoots a bright bolt of fire through the air, blasting the disc into dust with a loud, fiery _crack _of sound.

"Again," he shouts, and Bolin complies, sending another disc soaring high over all their heads, and Mako traces its arc like an archer, narrow-eyed and still - he whips out and burns it from the air again, leaving only a cloud of ashes wafting slowly into empty space. Bolin launches again and Mako readies himself - she sucks a breath in through her teeth, she wants to try, they're enjoying themselves… And they move like clockwork, playing their bending like music, a song of power and skill, she can do that too -

Korra leaps forward and hip-checks Mako, knocking him aside, throwing a dart of fire at the disc and just barely clipping the edge. Mako smirks and flings his arm out in front of her as Bolin throws another disc, and she claps him on the back of the head, ducks under his arm and kicks fire at the disc, a precise, well-aimed pop of her pointed foot. The disc vanishes in a fiery blaze and Bolin hollers a cheer, throwing both hands high over his head.

"Great job, Korra!" Asami yells, and Korra whoops and pumps her fist, leaping in excitement. And she yelps in surprise, color rising in her face, as Mako swoops and wraps his arms around her legs, lifting her with bodily ease, her hips to his shoulder. She plants a hand on his other shoulder, laughing as she steadies herself, and she feels the strong press of his arms and chest against her legs.

"Those were fouls," he says coolly, but he's smiling, up in his eyes.

"Hey, Mako? Maybe you just suck at probending," she says, and he snorts, tilting his head back to look at her better.

"I do _not_," he says, turning towards Asami; "ask her, she'll tell you!"

"He doesn't suck!" Asami calls back, Pabu draped elegantly around her shoulders like a lively, chirruping scarf. "Also, you definitely fouled him."

Korra rolls her eyes, putting her hand on Mako's face and pushing flippantly, and he tightens his hold around her legs.

"Ok, so you're good for something," she says, "but I'm better!"

It takes a moment of concentration, half a second, but she points her toes, slips her legs from his grasp, and vaults over his shoulders - she lands easily on the ground behind him and calls the earth to her, like a word that comes swift and sure to her tongue, a simple yank on an earthbound thread of chi. The ground beneath his feet breaks and Mako unbalances, stumbling forward in surprise, and Korra grabs the back of his shirt to save him, laughing, laughing, it feels so good to laugh…

She wants to unchain him, she wants to see him loose, she wants to see the lines of his body curl and curve like the crest of a wave, rising and falling with lazy power, her touch floating on him, carried along on a whim of careless motion and drunk on the deepest colors. And so Korra, sitting on a stack of crates, kicks her foot against his hip and whispers _do you want to go up_ and Mako says _up where_ and what she means is outside, outside where the sun is just about to set, how long has he been down here without the sun, how long can firebenders live without their heart?

They leave, quietly; Korra looks over her shoulder and Asami turns Korra's gaze forward again with a sweep of her palm turned downward: _go_.

Mako and Korra pass the factory floor and Korra watches his shoulders sharpen, the nervous clenching of a fist around his spine, but it's okay because she puts her hand over his shoulder and tells him so - "you're with me," she says, and Mako lets go of his scarf, his knuckles polished with pale bloodlessness.

They stand just inside the door of Hiroshi's private workshop and Mako blinks and flinches as Korra opens the door, letting in the light of a winter sunset, and outside the sun is a white coal broken open in a sky of ashes and spilled rosewater, glowing red and bright as it slips towards the horizon.

Mako moves past Korra with a soft crunch of his footsteps on the brittle snow, and she leans against the doorframe and just lets him be for a moment. The air fresh and cold, a deep, sweet breath, the mountains of the valley cupped like outstretched hands, overflowing with light grey-white-pink. He stops, stock-still, as though something has broken underfoot, and in one motion throws a whip of fire through the air, a ribbon that snaps and curls and rolls, in a color more furious with passion and intensity than she's ever seen him make - the yellow and orange of a molten ingot of joy, unburied from some forgotten earth, a red bled from the sun with the point of a knife.

"Wow," she breathes, and Mako turns to her, lips parted, his breath a faint wisp.

"Yeah," he says, "wow. Korra, I… "

He looks at his hand, a faint line on his brow, but there's nothing there to help him and Mako looks up.

"Sometimes, you forget - or someone tells you to forget, or - " he sighs and stares out over the valley, the sun balanced on the tip of the mountain by the sea. "Or you just don't remember what it's like to - to like what you were given. Because of someone else."

Korra closes her eyes; his voice is weightless. What did he tell her about fire, the first time they met, in that hallway at the rally? She opens her eyes as Mako brushes a lock of hair behind her ear, his fingertips warm and soft.

"So thanks," Mako murmurs, and she laughs once in surprise.

"What for?"

"For that look on your face," he says, "when you bend. Even with your dad being who he is. You're amazing, you know that? Korra, you're really…"

He stops, his hand on her cheek.

The kiss is a wildfire: it starts slow, lips cool and soft, but the spark of breath he gives her lands in her breast with a sharp burst of heat and all kinds of things begin to burn in her - the flavor of his smile, a tart pride sweet with trust, and the wasteland dryness of an untouched life, set it on fire for new things to grow; the name she never wanted breaks as it's consumed, an old, rotten, bitter decay gone up in smoke but Korra is still here, clinging to the last seconds of sunlight with her arm around his neck, mouth open as she pulls away, trailing flames from her lips.

His eyes are bright and Korra feels her breath hitch.

"Mako, you shouldn't feel that way," she says, hugging her arm, "I'm not… I've messed up so many times and so many people have gotten hurt, so you shouldn't. Feel that way."

Mako shakes his head, the corner of his lip turning up, a tilted, weary smile.

"Maybe I shouldn't, but I want to," he says, and takes her hand in his. "Believe me, I want to - "

And it starts to break - the shame, the storm deep inside her, an eggshell of thunder and dark fire, flooding her with a heat that runs and spills as sunlight in her blood. Believe him. She can do that. She can try.

Pleasantries. Small talk. Ikki, patting her father's head, introducing Korra and Asami as "_she_ thinks I should get pink tattoos and _her_ favorite color is maroon which is nice but not as good as purple" and Asami losing the clipped tone she used with Tarrlok when Tenzin asks how she is.

And Korra, finally, trying hard to still her beating heart, loud over her thoughts, telling him that she doesn't want to be an air acolyte, she's a waterbender, and she just has one question.

"What's it like to airbend?" Korra asks, and Tenzin frowns and strokes his beard, his eyes rolling left and up as he thinks.

"Detachment," he says, "to airbend is to detach yourself from your worries and your fears and let go, to merely be without all the weight of your self. This is what airbenders hold to be the meaning of freedom."

Korra crosses her arms and _hmms_ from the back of her throat. It's obtuse and she doesn't really get it, but it _kind_ of makes sense, and she scuffs her heel against the ground, her mouth in a bunched, uneven moue.

Tenzin's gaze is far-eyed, drifting across the sea, to the statue of Avatar Aang.

"I think my father would describe it as being - "

" - like a leaf on the wind," Korra murmurs, and Tenzin looks at her, eyes wide in pleasant surprise.

She smiles at him.

* * *

WELP THERE YOU HAVE IT KIDDOS

enjoy the cutesy stuff while it lasts because chapter 9 is ... going to be lots of fun and i mean that in the worst possible way

LEAVE A REVIEW OR SOMETHING IDK I LIKE HEARING YOUR THOUGHTS and it always encourages me to write. more fun and games at pulpofiction dot tumblr dot com


	11. Escalation, Escape

HOLY FRICK ON A STICK I FINISHED THE CHAPTER ok here it is, in all its unedited, hastily finished glory

sorry i had to graduate college first but here it is, thanks for your patience! this chapter is... a mess, the pacing is a lot quicker than the other chapters and the style is all over the place; but i'm proud of this mess. it's a pretty good mess and a lot of important things happened. enjoy

* * *

**I. Escalation**

_What are you smiling about?_

_Nothing, Dad._

She relives it in the morning, and the morning after, and the morning after that, too - Korra sits next to Amon, smiling to herself, relaxed like a blow to the head as the Lieutenant drones on and on about recruits and the mecha tanks are almost complete and the preparations for the arena require fine-tuning if you'd like to look at the plans, sir. Amon nods and Korra doesn't listen, she doesn't care… she can barely keep from easy and carefree laughter during bending practice, has to stay cold even though Mako's every sideways glance and small, relaxed smile burns across her as fireworks, bursts of color and sound and heat that fizzle out, leaving only darkness until the next one.

He _likes_ her.

Mako likes her enough to smile at her when Noatak is there, and to kiss her once when he isn't, and Korra can't do anything except take each thing and hide them until late at night when she lies awake, using her fingers to unravel the sore knot of heat between her hips, wondering, wondering, wondering - ?

And he likes her, Mako likes her; she can believe this, she can try…

Lunch in their cell: after bending practice, with food stolen from the Sato kitchen and Asami there too, holding out bowls to Mako and Bolin piled full of garlic beef and soft white rice, streaked with dark green basil leaves and shiny red bell peppers. Bolin picks out the chilies gleaming with oil, long orange-black teeth, and feeds them to Pabu as Mako, with his mouth full, tells Korra about a street stall by the probending arena, with amazing pentapod dumplings with green onions and pickled ginger, she should try them some time…

"Yeah, and then we can go to a probending match!" Korra says, plucking a slice of bell pepper from his empty bowl with two deft fingers, and he stares at her with a blank expression. It lasts half a second.

"Sure," Mako says, rising from his seat on the edge of the bed to wash his bowl in the cell's sink, and it's not until much, much later that Korra realizes it was the last thing he said.

That night, Asami corners her as she takes a drink from her canteen after chi-blocking practice, both of them aching and tired from a class that went more wrong than it did right: everyone fumbling the forms, everyone missing their marks, and Korra yelling herself hoarse for them to do it again, they're all useless!

"Korra, are you alright? Is there something you want to talk about?" Asami says, wiping her face with a hand towel. Korra leans against the yellowed basement wall and slides to the floor, heels kicked out, as the rest of her students slip out through the door into the underground with deferential nods of their heads.

"No," Korra mutters, slapping her own towel over her shoulder and folding her arms over her knees, tracing the lines of the tatami mats across the room and back. Her lungs feel hollow.

"You're not alright, or you don't want to talk?"

Korra rolls her eyes sideways. Both. Neither. Whatever. She glances up at Asami, standing over her with a hand on her hip, looking taller than usual under the basement's low spackled ceiling. Asami, who is not an Equalist, and who goes to probending matches and probably doesn't have a closet full of armor she's outgrown.

"Tell me about your first kiss," Korra says, lifting her head, and Asami's eyebrows go up in curious surprise.

"Alright," she says slowly, sitting on the floor in front of Korra and crossing her legs, "I was fifteen. He was a guy from the Academy named Tomou. We liked the same books and he took swordsmanship lessons from the Piandao School and on our third date we went to the promenade and rode the Ferris wheel… it was really cold at the top, so he put his arm around my shoulders and then we kissed and that was… well, that was it."

"That's nice," Korra says, because it is. She can't think of anything else to say.

Asami sighs, her hands clasped in her lap.

"Is this about Mako - "

"I don't want to talk about it," Korra says, jumping to her feet, and in her haste she knocks over the open canteen and spills water across the floor. It pools over the tatami mat, darkening the rice straw, seeping between the ridges. She lifts her hand to bend the water back but it doesn't matter, the mat is ruined; and Korra drops her forehead into her palm as Asami studies her with tight eyes. Her first kiss was with a boy her father tried to murder, a boy she's not allowed to have, a boy only alive because he's useful. And when he isn't?

Korra goes home and lies awake all night long: and when he isn't? Then what?

* * *

"The benders asked us a question, a question written in the way this city is built, the way this city lives: how much are we willing to endure suffering? How much are we willing to endure fear?"

Amon takes the crowbar in both hands, jams it into the crate, and - CRACK - splinters it open with a forceful shove, tossing the crowbar aside with a triumphant gesture. The metallic clang of the crowbar hitting the floor echoes throughout the factory, ringing against the vaulted walls, and the Equalists, gathered around him in a wide circle, all lean forward a fraction in silent expectation.

"This, brothers and sisters, is our answer."

He picks up a glove from the nest of straw, shining and clinking, an insect of supple leather and brass parts, and pulls it over his hand, holding it up for the crowd to see. The glove's palm hisses and sizzles, spitting pale blue sparks into the air, and there is murmuring among the Equalists. Korra stands next to him, arms crossed, taking up room with a wide-legged stance. She doesn't have to do anything except look imposing.

"A small demonstration is in order," Amon says, in a voice tinged with casual malice, and the circle of Equalists parts as the Lieutenant breaks through the crowd, dragging a hooded man by the ropes around his wrists. The Lieutenant shoves him to his knees in front of Amon and Korra's gut twists, her breath falling out even as she makes her face stony; she's not supposed to care - the Lieutenant yanks the hood off the man's head, and in the quiet, his haggard, terrified panting through the gag is the loudest sound they hear. He's young, his eyes darting around the crowd of Equalists, hair falling damp across his face, and Amon looms over him, lifting his chin up with two gloved fingers. The man blinks and tries not to meet his gaze but Amon leans in, the glove spitting sparks.

"This young man," he announces, "this bender, fancied himself clever, and got caught attempting to steal blueprints in a pathetic attempt to play the saboteur - " Amon backhands him with his fist, eliciting a muffled cry of pain as the man's head jerks to the side and drops, hanging between his shoulders.

"And he got caught, as you... can see. He had a question of his own, you see; how could he undermine the revolution? What could he do to stop us, now, on the eve of our declaration? I have the answer to that, as well..."

Amon's voice lingers as he lets go of the young man, whose shoulders are trembling, face covered in a sheen of sweat; and Amon steps back and scans the crowd, the gloved hand relaxed at his side.

"Ah - yes, there you are. Hiroshi, this at the highest power, is it not?"

Several Equalists step aside to reveal Hiroshi in the crowd, one hand in his pocket, looking clean and combed as always. He nods to Amon.

"Yes it is, sir, at full power."

"Good," Amon says cheerfully. He turns back to the man and pauses, his frame suspended on the edge of motion, waiting, waiting, waiting -

Korra grits her teeth, dropping her gaze into the crate, focusing on the way the light spills across the brass parts, gold-white, the soft bends in the leather and the green glass circles - don't look, don't listen, be here but not here -

Amon slams his hand into the young man's collarbone, drawing a muffled, high-pitched scream as the shock tears through him, splinters of bright blue-whiteness bursting from the spot where Amon holds the glove - a scream that lasts too long and then lasts even longer and finally Amon lets go and the man keels over, huddled onto the floor, twitching and shivering.

The Equalists roar and shout as Amon paces the line, holding out the glove so they can all see it, and Korra stares at the man on the floor. His jacket, filthy and blackened, has a scorch mark where the shock hit him, his hands tremble against the ground, and he's still conscious, whimpering into the gag - Korra steps forward, drops to one knee, and presses her hand to the side of his neck, because there's a chi point there and if you hit it just right - he looks at her in terror, flinching as she touches him, but she says nothing as his eyes roll back into his head and his body is, at last, still. For now. He'll have to wake up again soon.

"Tenchu," Amon says, breaking Korra out of her thoughts, and she looks up to see him offering her the crowbar. "Don't touch him. Open the next crate."

She does, with her booted foot on the edge of the crate, and she feels the twist deep in her shoulder as she heaves down on the crowbar with all her force, the wood cracking and snapping apart. More gloves. She and Amon start to hand them out, passing the gloves into the willing hands of the Equalists, who chatter excitedly and flex their fingers into the leather as the Lieutenant fits the hood over the man's head again and drags him away.

"Can I talk to you afterwards? Just come upstairs," someone says in a low tone, and Korra tears herself away from watching the Lieutenant and realizes that the next Equalist in line is Asami. She can tell by the eyes behind the green goggles and the unreadable posture, as undisturbed and smooth as a sheet of untouched paper.

"Yeah, of course," she says, pressing the glove into Asami's hands, and Asami steals away without a single word more.

Korra finds her later in the Sato mansion garage, sitting on the floor with her legs spread, a large square of pale blue linen before her. It's a childish pose, especially with the slouch in Asami's shoulders and the pout on her mouth as she frowns at the glove, using a pair of tweezers to unhook a wire from the wristband.

The rest of the glove is lined up in neat orderly rows on the cloth, wires and bolts and casings, and the body of it dangles from Asami's hand like the limp, stripped body of a small creature, skeletal and lifeless.

"Hey," Korra says, kneeling on the floor next to her, taking off the Tenchu mask, and Asami glances at her, carefully twisting her hand so that the wire slides out of the glove and curls around the tweezers. She could be de-veining a shrimp. Asami sets the coil of wire, a little copper bird's nest, onto the cloth next to its fellows and exhales in frustration.

"How come you don't have a glove?" she says, narrowing her eyes, and Korra splays her fingers, waggling them at Asami.

"My dad and I both don't have them," she says, "it makes us look more powerful. Makes an impression and stuff."

Asami takes this with a twitch of her eyebrows and casts her gaze over the glove parts, the thing in her hand, which has long since stopped sparking.

"I think I figured out how it works," she says, "there's a battery pack in the wrist guard that wires to the electrodes in the palm, but you only get a current when you apply pressure and connect the wires…"

She stops, absorbed in its form, and tosses the glove onto the cloth, scattering the parts with muffled clinks.

"Did you know Amon was going to electrocute him - the spy?"

Korra doesn't want to answer her. The long silence that follows is answer enough, and Asami looks as ill as she feels.

"Oh," she says, almost voiceless.

She's pale, her lips pressed together and without color, and each breath she takes seems exaggerated with the rise of her chest, deep and full and quick. Her foot swings back and forth, almost uncontrollably, and when Korra reaches out to steady her, the twitch shifts to her knee.

"Korra, you're protecting Mako and Bolin, right?" she says, in an oddly high voice, "you're keeping them safe?"

"As safe as I can," Korra says, "as much I can help it."

"Can you - can you keep me safe too?"

Korra starts as a feeling of apprehension, tight and uncomfortably hot, creeps into her.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," she says, and Asami shakes her head, as cagey and alert as a deer in a forest, listening for the snap of branches underfoot. Her face darkens with dread.

"Just - Korra, I need to - " her breathing turns shallow and the shaking in her leg skitters and jerks across her and Asami looks around the room, scattered, trying to focus on things that aren't there, drawing her legs in close to her body in an awkward, broken huddle. Origami, unfolded halfway and left to wilt.

She jumps when Korra rests her hand on her knee and stares right through Korra, tears glistening on her cheeks.

"I don't want the glove," she says, in a strangled voice, "I don't want the glove. Why did he make me do this? I don't want it."

He. _Hiroshi_. Korra's heart sinks, down, down, down, into some unnamed depths, dragging her down with it, and she bundles up the cloth with the glove and all its parts and pushes it away, sending it sliding under the wheel of the nearest Satomobile.

"I don't want the glove, Korra. I don't want it. I don't want the glove - "

"It's gone, Asami, I took it away - "

"I don't - "

It has nothing to do with the glove and so Korra scoots over and wraps her arms around Asami, who shudders into her, panting hoarsely, limp and tense all at once. Why? What is Asami afraid of? It's not the right time to ask so Korra just holds her - Asami flutters like a broken bird, knocked from the sky, but by what -

The door bursts open and Asami startles into Korra, her eyes draining like water. Korra grips her tightly and frowns, scrabbling for the Tenchu mask with her free hand.

"Asami, are you in he - oh," Hiroshi says, standing in the doorway, and Korra feels a surge of hatred for him, all too familiar, a disgust that rises through her in a nauseating swell. His fault. It's all his fault.

"Is she doing this again?" he says in a loud voice, and Asami's expression shifts into only sharp lines and stone-hard rage, a fury that could cut diamonds - Korra grabs her by the shoulders and makes her sit, doesn't let her get up from her spot on the floor.

"Hiroshi," Korra says casually, drawling over his first name as she re-affixes the mask to her face and stands up, "inform the Lieutenant that Asami Sato is being re-assigned from her current unit."

Hiroshi scowls at her, turning red under his finely-combed mustache and gold-rimmed glasses.

"Excuse me?" he blusters, but Korra clears her throat, one fist on her hip, drawing herself up to her full height and squaring her shoulders. He can't fight her. He's a fool, a soft, insolent fool, making fancy toys and watching as they cut people, beat them, burn them - like a child who plucks the wings from moths, squatting on his heels as the moth skitters in circles across the ground.

"You are not excused," Korra growls, "and she's not going to be an Equalist. Not if she doesn't want to, and not if I have anything to say about it."

Hiroshi opens his mouth and shuts it, speechless with anger, and Korra narrows her eyes.

"Leave. You have no right to do what you're doing. She's not a thing, she's your _daughter_. Leave before I make you leave!" she snarls, taking a step forward, clenching her fists, and Hiroshi huffs once. And with a lingering, furious glance at Asami, he turns on his heel and storms off.

The door slams shut behind him and echoes through the garage, empty and resounding.

Korra relaxes, the tension washing from her, and she turns around, one hand on her knee, the other on Asami's shoulder.

"Are you okay?" she says, and Asami nods.

"He's not what I'm wo - I'm fine now, thanks," Asami whispers, color rushing to her cheeks, and Korra pats her on the head. Her friend, her best friend. She needs to be safe.

"I want you to stay with Mako and Bolin tonight, can you do that?" Korra says, unhooking the keys from her belt. "I don't want you to be alone."

Asami nods again, her long, slender fingers closing around the keys, and Korra sighs in relief. There is light in Asami's eyes again, returning slowly but surely, and it warms her into her bones.

They go down to the cells almost immediately, Asami stopping to tie the glove parts up in the cloth and carry them with her; and Bolin is the first one to make her smile, lifting Pabu to her face for a lick and a nibble on the nose. Korra, leaning against the wall with Mako, nudges him in the side until he looks at her.

"Thanks," she murmurs, and he shrugs.

"She's your friend," he says, threading his fingers into hers. And he squeezes her hand, just once, and with a swift tuck of his head kisses her on the check. Just once.

* * *

It's too cold to go swimming, the sky is too empty, the sea hisses across the sand with a harsh insistence; only the horizon holds it back from overwhelming the shore and rising to drown the rest of the wind-swept dunes.

But they're going to go swimming anyway, Korra and Noatak, and she mutters under her breath. The motorbikes are parked on the cliff, thick black ink smears against the grey-white sky, and the wind tears through Korra with a howling whistle as she stands on the shore with Noatak, fingers stiff with cold as she undoes her jacket and drops it on the sand. The beach is an hour south of the city, hidden from the coastal road by the bluffs, pocked with tufts of sea grass and tumbleweeds. Even from the highest bluff, the landscape is deserted - only rough, pale grassland and the flat blue-grey sea, wrinkling on itself.

Waterbending. How long has she wanted this? How long has she wanted to grip the feeling of water in her hands, feel it pulse through her stronger and more familiar than the beat of her own blood, and use it? Toy with rivers like ribbons, slice the air with daggers of ice, answer the flow and current of her bending, her ancient, endless soul? Since before the rally, at least, all those months ago, and it seems… less childish, now; more like an obligation than a wish. She has to learn it.

And now what, Korra wonders, stepping out of her thick winter pants, her bare feet scoured by the cold, coarse sand. Next to her, Noatak tugs his shirt off, his hair blown forward by the wind, ignoring the chill on his broad back and dense muscles.

He looks at her, completely at ease in the crisp winter air, and tilts his head towards the waves.

"Get in," Noatak says, and Korra takes a deep breath, flexing her shoulders up and puffing her cheeks. It's too damn cold and too damn early for this.

"Okay, here I go," she mutters, and readies herself on the sand, bouncing her weight from one foot to the other. The ocean looks freezing. It's _six in the morning_. She could be on her way to bending practice, where fire is warm and Mako is warmer.

"Go," he says, giving her a firm push between the shoulder blades (his hand falls on her as a stone, hard and heavy). "Dive. It's easier that way."

She tsks at him and frowns at the sea, building up her nerve with each breath, and - sprints, pounds down the sand and splashes into the waves, breaking the dark blue-green water into sprays of white. It's colder than she thought it would be, burning through her, and her skin crawls with goose pimples as Korra trudges through the water at waist-height, arms out, teeth chattering. A wave rises a few yards in front of her and she waits for the swell to sharpen, tilt and curl forward, before tucking her head and diving in, her senses full with the dark roar of rushing seawater, salty and stinging.

Korra breaks the surface on the other side of the wave, treading easily, to see Noatak wading into the water, kicking up broad droplet wings with each step.

"Now get out," he shouts, and Korra groans in exasperation as she hauls herself out of the waves, shaking water from her hair to meet him in the shallows where he stands, swaying slightly in the push-and-pull of the tide.

"This water's almost as cold as you are," she snaps, and Noatak makes a face so Korra ducks, smirking as he throws a sheet of water at her.

"Don't sass me, girl," he says, and braces his hands on his hips, shoulders rolled back. "Show me your waterbending - I know you practice bending on the roof, don't give me that look."

"How did - never mind, " Korra sighs, with an odd relief that he only brought it up now, and without punishing her for it - she raises her hands, palms-down, over the water.

"Waterbending is about redirecting strength. Water breaks the things that resist it, and carries the things that do not... Don't fight or force it. Flow with it," Noatak says, and Korra knows that, she knows that much, or feels it at least… and she lets it come to her…

She turns her cupped hands in a circle and a sphere of water rolls out of the oncoming surf, wobbling slightly, clear and glassy; and Korra lifts it to eye-level, blurring Noatak from her view.

"How's this, Dad?" she says, and he waves it off. Passable. She lets it fall back into the sea and blows a drop of water from her lips, sharp with salt. The wave rolls in high, crashing into her hips, and she takes a few steps forward as her weight shifts.

"I said _don't fight it!_" Noatak barks, and Korra grits her teeth at him.

"Okay, I won't," she mutters, wondering if he wants her to just fall over and drown instead, and lifts another water sphere from the sea. She bites her lip and tries to think… a water whip. She's seen them before, and the form seems easy, arms bent like so and leaning back on one leg - the other one forward and then you just - shove it - Korra whips out with her arm and the sphere collapses in a shower of droplets. She looks at Noatak.

"The water whip is not a firebending form, you idiot," he says. "Do it again. Correctly."

Korra does it again, with a forceful jerk of her hand - she sends the sphere of water shooting through the air and it pops open as it hits the water in front of him.

"Incompetent," Noatak says, sloshing towards her, and Korra moves away, caught in a familiar, weary panic. Her skin feels hotter than it should; the water is so cold it burns her. Her teeth chatter with staccato clicks and she wants nothing more than to leave, fall into bed, and sleep for a week.

"I'm trying," she says, "it's not _my_ fault if you never tea - "

She stops as Noatak towers over her, close enough for her to see the streaks of grey and white in his irises. She doesn't want to be here. The wind slices over the water, howling through her hair, and where her skin isn't wet it's tight with a freezing dryness. She wants to go home.

"You're not trying, you're failing. What did I say about waterbending?"

Korra stares at him, trying not to blink, and hugs her elbows.

"Are you dense? What did I say?"

She bites hard on her tongue. What did she do wrong? The form was right, it was perfectly fine, each motion was exactly as it should have been, but …

"'Don't fight it. Flow with it,'" Korra says in a dull tone, and Noatak beckons for her to try again.

She tries. She fails.

* * *

Noatak calls it off by mid-afternoon. They build a fire on the beach, out of driftwood and dried brush, and Korra sits with her arms wrapped around her knees, her legs drawn in, warm in a thick woolen blanket. The fire hisses and snaps, and a log breaks in two with an easy crunch, bright red with heat. She curls her fingers around the edge of the blanket and pulls it to her cheeks, keeping a steady gaze on the fire as Noatak returns from the top of the bluff with one of the motorcycle saddlebags, dropping it onto the sand next to her.

He kneels on the sand and opens the bag, casting glances at her as he pulls out balls of sticky rice wrapped in paper-thin slices of beef. He wants her to feel bad so she ignores him, doesn't let her face slacken from its stiff, stony composure.

This was an old game; how long could they make the silence last until one of them broke it, whoever was more desperate to hear the other's voice. Korra bites her tongue, hard. She has no intention of losing. The horizon is a knife-edge between the sky and the sea.

Noatak crosses his legs and starts eating without a single word, his hair windswept and coarse with dried sea salt. He scowls at Korra as she reaches out to take one of the rice balls, brushing a blade of grass from his thick sweater with a studiously dismissive gesture.

She's on her second rice ball when he loses, clapping his hands clean and setting them firmly on his knees.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Noatak says, and Korra goes _tch_ as the fire pops and spits a spark into the cold grey air.

"Not for me," she says with a snort, "but maybe for _you_ - "

She stops as his face darkens. She knows better than that.

"I'll do better next time," Korra mumbles after a long pause, her tongue thick with words: _this always happens what did we expect why do you have to push so hard I can't think with you around Dad why do you have to be like this why do we have to do this every time_. Every time. A day full of water whips that twisted and fell, wild like kites on cut strings; water walls cracked with seaweed, waves she drew around her and threw off like robes of grey glass, Korra do it again yes Dad but I don't know what I'm doing wrong _just do it again_ –

"Yes, you will," Noatak says, with a flat note of finality, and Korra grinds her teeth together as her throat fills with a dull hotness. She doesn't have the voice to tell him anything else he wants to hear.

Several minutes elapse, and a few more, and then Noatak gets up and walks off down the beach, each footstep kicking up a little burst of sand. Korra sighs as he leaves: finally, she can be angry alone.

She watches the flames shift from white to yellow to red, fluttering soundlessly, little petals of fire growing from the coals and logs. The fire is bright and lively, snapping with energy, and she blinks as the heat spreads over her face. Korra leans forward, steadying herself with a fist in the sand, and reaches out, fingers splayed, still staring into the fire. It's so warm and beautiful, like it fell from the sun and landed on the beach; and she can feel it pulsing, beating, a quiet thud-thud from somewhere outside her senses, she sinks her hand into the heart of the fire with a swift, graceful motion, her fingers unburned, a pleasant white warmth flowing through her -

"That's quite a skill. Who taught you that?" Noatak says quietly, and she jerks away from him as he crouches beside her on the sand. When did he come back? She feels her chest tighten.

"Mako told me, I didn't - sorry, I won't do it again," she breathes, withdrawing her hand; "bending's not a toy…"

Noatak doesn't react to this offering so Korra waits, unable to take her eyes off his, less than a foot away. There's an odd flash of color in them, moonlight on ice.

"You haven't smiled like that in a long time," Noatak says, and even with the waves crashing against the shore she can hear him, every word soft and calm. Noatak strokes her cheek once with the backs of his fingers, a quick, light gesture. She closes her eyes at his cool touch on her skin, finds herself unable to recoil or relax, suspended between relief and fear and confusion all at once.

She opens them again to see Noatak retrieving his cigarettes from the pocket of the saddlebags and leaving to resume his walk down the shore without a single word, leaving her by the fire.

Korra collapses onto the sand, drawing the blanket around her again, pulling it up and tucking her nose under the fabric. Even with the fire she feels cold.

* * *

**II.** **Escape**/_anahata_

Korra wakes up in the middle of the night with a start and a short gasp of breath. She rubs her hand across her face and stares at the ceiling, a stone of worry still heavy in her chest, deep-set and hard. She'd had a weird dream, flying on an sky bison across a huge empty continent, the wind talking to her as the rivers and hills rolled away under her, soundless, and someone's hand on her shoulder, someone she'd known forever but never met. They were calm and swift and weightless, part of the sky, freer and looser than the movement of sunlight on water, and then falling, her body falling faster than her soul.

"Hey, Aang," she murmurs, "someday we're gonna have to talk for real."

She sits up, blankets falling, shuddering at the sudden breach of cold into the soft shell of warmth she'd slept in. There are shallow grey shadows on the walls from the night outside and Korra can see snow falling at odd angles, needle-streaks of white. She finds her stuffed polar-bear in the pile of blankets and hugs it to herself, fiddling with its ears, tapping its glassy eyes and nose, its felt pink tongue, wondering about Naga. What was the point of a spirit animal if it lived alone in a cage? Avatar Aang rode on his sky bison, she knew that much, and Korra smiles at the thought of riding Naga, a huge furry mount, she'd smell like dog afterwards… could people even ride polar bear dogs? Was that a thing people did? She'd never heard of it. She'd never heard of a lot of things.

Korra sets the polar-bear dog back onto the bed and pats it on the head. It doesn't react, as expected, and she tweaks her mouth and frowns in resigned disappointment.

"Grr, bark, woof," Korra says, and leaves the polar-bear dog to slip into the hallway towards her father's room. She just has to check - she has the strange, tense feeling she is alone in the apartment; there had been footsteps and creaking floorboards somewhere outside her dream, and her heart is still loud and startled from the sudden jolt of waking.

She slides her hand along Noatak's bedroom door as it opens, fingertips hissing on the pale wood, and peers inside. The bed is empty.

Korra stands there a full minute, thinking. He should have been angry with her on the beach when he caught her firebending. He should have been very angry with her -

It's normal for him to keep odd hours, totally normal, Korra repeats it to herself as she yanks her armor and uniform from its hook and dumps it on the living room floor. She starts pulling it on and strapping herself in, clumsy and one-handed, as she dials headquarters, telephone pressed between her cheek and her shoulder. Her hair, loose and unbrushed, swings in front of her eyes and her mouth, and she splutters it out of the way as a voice picks up the call.

"Tako's Take-Out, 24 hours, 24 flavors, can we take your order?" says the voice, chirpy and sing-song, and Korra rolls her eyes as she hops on one foot, pulling her pants to her waist.

"The password is 'five-flavor lotus dumplings with a side of garlic noodles,' this is Tenchu, now put my father on the line," Korra says. Add a double order of stupid, she thinks, shrugging into her coat and almost dropping the telephone. The delicate hands of the clock on the radio point to half past three.

"He's not here," said the voice, after a short pause, all cheer dropped, and Korra huffs into the receiver.

"Where is he? I need to talk to him," Korra snaps, and pinches the bridge of her nose in frustration.

"I believe he's at the Sato compound factory, but he relayed instructions that he was not to be disturbed, even for you. I can send a messa - "

Korra slams the telephone back onto the cradle and fumes, her fist still tight around the receiver. When did she start trusting him? There was no reason to trust him. Her father never told her anything, never told her what he was really thinking, never, never, never, you could never trust a man who lived inside a mask, you could never trust his words or his hands, his warnings, his promises, never at all, not even once…

Korra lifts her foot and kicks the end table over, sending it to the floor with a loud thump, the telephone sliding off with a shrill clang.

"_Shit!_" she yells, with an angry jerk of her shoulders, and drops her face into her hands.

* * *

Korra doesn't bother taking her motorcycle to the Sato garage. She leaves it at the top of the drive and makes her way through the dusting of snow to Hiroshi's workshop, shouldering the door open and throwing the lever on the underground elevator. The elevator is waiting at the top, ready for her, and she pauses in the light-reddened mouth of the tunnel, staring into its deep black throat.

She vaults over the platform railing and half walks, half slides down the tracks to the bottom of the elevator shaft. It's quieter this way, no one will notice she's here… and Korra jumps down each flight of stairs in the stairwell, landing cat-footed and quiet.

Halfway down she stops and looks to the top of the stairwell: a noise. The door opening. A silhouette on the opposite wall, cast in a soft red shaft of light.

Korra immediately crouches on the landing and tightens her mask, pressing herself to the metal banisters, ducking as far as she can into a shadow. Her blood is pounding with a steady, resilient beat, and she feels a dry chill creep up her skin, goosebumps on her neck. She can fight them, whoever they are -

The door closes again and the silhouette disappears. Korra breathes once, counting the seconds of her exhalation, maybe they left - her foot shoots out from under her. She clings to the banister, struggling to hold herself up as the person calls out to her.

"Korra? Is that you?" says Asami, in a careful stage-whisper, and Korra lets go and sits on the landing with a painful thud.

"Yeah, it's me, what are you doing here?" she says, getting to her feet, rubbing the nascent bruise on her hip. Asami takes the stairs two at a time, dressed in her Equalist uniform with her hair pulled back and her face clean of make-up.

"I saw you come up the drive," Asami says, after a quick hug, "so I came down to see you…"

She wrings her Equalist facemask in her hands, and the shadows on her face shift as she leans from one foot to the other.

"You look exhausted," Korra whispers. "Go back to sleep. "

Asami looks stricken.

"I can't sleep," she says, "and you haven't said what you're doing down here, either."

_Checking on Mako and Bolin, something's wrong, I can feel it_ - Korra sighs. She didn't want to be right, she just wanted to make sure, and if something was wrong and Asami got dragged into it, if she got hurt… In the darkness Korra can just barely make the shape of an electrified glove, strapped to Asami's waist by her belt. A glove she knows how to use, with skills she learned from Korra.

"I thought you didn't like that thing," Korra says, pointing towards the glove, and Asami shrugs.

"I'm going to protect myself," she says, more determined than sullen, and Korra nods.

"Fine, come with me," Korra says, clumping down the staircase, and Asami pulls her facemask over her head and follows.

They creep across the dark warehouse into the prison hallway and as soon as they step inside there's a rustling, a shifting, a human movement. The boys are here, they're awake, and Korra almost laughs in relief. She runs to the cell door and skids to a stop, clutching the bars, leaning forward, smiling -

"Where's my brother, you jerks - Korra!"

Bolin drops his fists, relaxes his squared legs, but Korra notices with a growing dread that he's unkempt and tense, roughed up around the face, a long smear of half-dried blood under his nose.

Mako is not there. The cell is a mess, the chair overturned and the table leg splintered, with black scorch marks across the walls. Korra yanks her mask off and opens the door as Bolin scoops Pabu out from under the bed and onto his shoulder, never taking his eyes off her.

"Bo, what happened?" Korra says. "Where's Mako? Why are you hurt?!"

Bolin's normal cheery humor is gone, replaced with a grim, stony look, set in his jaw and his eyes. And for a fleeting second, all Korra can think about is how boyish he used to look, how much younger and lighter. Now he stands like a stone pillar, all firm lines and immovable stance.

"They took him - your dad, I mean - he and some other guy woke us up and dragged Mako out of here, didn't even say why - Korra, what are they doing to my big brother?" he says gripping her shoulders hard with both hands, and Korra just gapes at him. She didn't want to find Bolin alone in the cell, hurt and angry, without Mako - his brother, his only brother, he'd be alone without Mako and the worst thing, the hardest, the most inhuman thing is being alone, she hates it -

"I - I don't know, I don't know where he is, I don't know," she stutters, as a fire catches in her blood, a bright hot rage - how dare her father, how dare he, he _promised_ - "but I'm gonna go get him! Asami, get Bolin out of here. I don't care where, just go!"

Korra takes a step back, and another. She wants to apologize to Bolin but chokes on a half-formed phrase, turns on her heel, and runs.

In the middle of the warehouse she skids to a stop, panting from her sprint, and looks around, her sense of purpose vague. Where would Amon have taken Mako? And to do what? He's mad at her, Korra realizes now, after all of his warnings to not get attached… he didn't hate the boys because they were benders. He hated them because she liked them.

And she liked Mako, she really liked Mako - Korra picks up a quick stride, checking all the doors into the storage hallways off the warehouse, listening for any sound or sign that Amon had been there. The first hallway is empty, and the second one, and the third one, all quiet, all deserted, all dark, and Korra grinds her teeth in frustration with each one. She fumbles for the next door and presses the bar, hearing the mechanical clicks as the handle depresses, and opens it just enough to see a light at the end of the hallway, pale and yellow and flickering.

And the Lieutenant standing guard in front of another door, hands clasped behind his back, the electrified Kali sticks buzzing and hissing. Near his foot, a dusty glass lamp with a small flame casts light, floating in a pool of oil.

Korra lets the door fall shut behind her. It echoes down the hallway, loud and hollow, and the Lieutenant looks up from his post. He unsheathes his Kali sticks and scowls into the darkness, where Korra waits, as quiet as possible, hidden in the shadows.

He takes a tentative step towards Korra, squinting in the dim light. Korra holds her breath, barely daring to blink. A shadow turned solid, moving through the light, the electricity of the Kali sticks glowing as sharp snaps and cracks in the reflection of his green goggles and on his hateful, brutal face. She wants him gone.

Korra lifts her hand and waves it - snatching an invisible moth out of the air - the lamp goes out, the Lieutenant spins around, and Korra runs forward. He turns again at her footsteps - she slams her fist into his jaw, relishing the crunch of her knuckles into his bones, and slices the side of her palm into his neck, thumb and forefinger together.

The Lieutenant crumples onto her with his head lolling and Korra catches him in her arms with her teeth bared in disgust, dropping him to the floor with more gentleness than he really deserves. There is a small strip of light coming from the door he was guarding and the faint sound of a voice, one voice, a voice familiar in its richness and and slick note of disdain. Korra's stomach churns and an ache of adrenaline races through her muscles, every nerve straining to move, to act, to do something _now_.

But she has to be smart about this and come up like a plan, like _he_ would, so Korra leans up against the side of the door and listens, her breath hanging from her parted lips.

A fist hitting flesh. A coarse, pained _oof!_, and an uneven tattoo of shoes against the floor, someone stumbling, struggling to stand up. A bodily thud. Korra hisses through her teeth, seething, a searing hotness under her skin as she hears Amon's voice:

"Look at me. Look at me, boy."

A pause.

"You've taken something very dear from me," Amon says, followed by another hit and a grunt of pain from Mako, and Korra could snap her father's bones with her bare hands.

"You have become nothing more than a distraction, leading her from her purpose, begging her to protect you. Ignorant scum that you are, you fail to realize she is not here for you. She is mine."

_But I am here for him,_ Korra thinks fiercely, but fighting her father head-on is the epitome of stupidity, with all she knows about his skills and his bloodbending_._ The Lieutenant lies unconscious on the floor and Korra drops to one knee beside him, feeling for his pulse with one hand on his neck and placing the other over her heart. She breathes deep, keeping still in the darkness, until her pulse matches the Lieutenant's.

She gingerly detaches his gloves from his hands and the Kali sticks from his grip, trying not to listen to her father's voice. Korra puts the gloves on and holds the Kali sticks out, giving them an experimental wave, cutting the air with a soft _whuff-whuff._ They fizzle with electricity and Korra smiles to herself, already tasting blood.

Korra lifts her gloved hand and knocks twice.

A body slides to the floor on the other side of the door and Amon calls out: "What is it, Lieutenant?"

She doesn't respond, keeping her heart rate as steady as possible, knowing that he was feeling for a second presence with his bloodbending.

"_Lieutenant_."

His boots clack against the floor and Korra tightens her grip on the Kali sticks as they approach, sounding one by one through her consciousness, she needs to be quick and decisive, strike with power at the first chance -

"I believe I told you, Lieute - " Amon starts, as he opens the door, and Korra jams the Kali sticks with as much strength as she can muster into his neck and chest, holding them there as the electricity crackles over him in bright blue needles, hearing him yell in pain - making her own father hurt, this man is her father, but she has to do it because what her father is doing is wrong -

Korra sidesteps as Amon drops to his knees and falls to the floor, his body twitching, and then slams the heel of her boot into the small of his back. She doesn't need him to wake up any time soon. He can stay there until she's gone.

Abruptly she claps her hands over her mouth and nose, all the blood draining from her face as she studies her father's prone figure on the floor. She did this. Korra's breath quickens, a nausea thick with self-loathing welling up in her throat. She attacked her own father. There is no coming back from this, none at all.

"Korra... " Mako gasps, limp and slumped against the wall, hands tied behind him, and she remembers why she's here. He looks worse than Bolin. His mouth is stained with blood, his cheek dark and shiny with bruises, and he flinches with a hiss of pain when her fingertip grazes his jaw.

"Shhh, shhh. Mako, it's okay," Korra says gently, taking his face in her hands, and he lifts his head to her as she kisses him. His lips shiver against hers, wet and warm, slippery with the taste of clean copper. Korra can feel his chest rising and falling under her so she touches her forehead to his and holds him until they both come back.

"I'm going to get you out of here," Korra whispers into his mouth. Mako nods with his eyes closed, tries to stand, and can't, his leg stiff and his body unbalanced; Korra lifts him to his feet and burns through the rope around his wrists.

"You can lean on me," she says, and Mako wordlessly gathers her in a hug, his face buried between her neck and her shoulder, heaving a long, shuddering sigh that rolls hot across her collarbone.

"Korra, I'm... you... " he murmurs, and she slips out of his arms, smiling.

"You don't have to say anything," she says, and Mako closes his hand around hers.

Korra doesn't look down as she steps over Amon, still unconscious. Mako stares with narrow eyes, turning his head over his shoulder to look as Korra guides him down the hallway, leaving the Lieutenant and her father on the floor.

"You did that," he says, in a quiet voice, and her guilt strains on her. Yes, she did.

They cross onto the warehouse floor, both of them turning in unison when they hear Bolin's voice.

"Mako!" he cries out, running to them from the far end of the warehouse, and Mako's hand never leaves Korra's as he embraces Bolin. Asami catches up just as quick, pressing her hand to her mouth in wide-eyed shock when she sees Mako.

"We couldn't leave yet," she says to Korra, "we had to know if you found him."

"Yeah, I did, but..."

Korra stops. Amon will wake up soon. They have to get out of here. They aren't safe. She has to keep her friends safe. Promises won't protect them from Amon.

"You all need to get out of here. Right now. Leave Republic City and don't come back," she says, throwing Mako's hand from her own and stepping away. Mako, Asami, and Bolin look at each other and then at her. She wishes they wouldn't, that they would just leave already; the longer they stand there in silence, the more she wants to hold onto them.

"Why're you still standing here? Go!" she says, voice rising to a shout, "my dad just beat you up because he's mad at me! What do you think he'll do if he finds you again? Just leave already!"

"Where should we go? Ba Sing Se? The Fire Nation?" Bolin asks.

"I shouldn't know where you guys go, it's better that way," she says, dragging her hands down her face; she wants to shove them away from her, howl them out of the warehouse and away from the factory. If only she didn't like them. It would be so much easier.

"I know where to go," Asami cuts in, "don't worry about it. We'll be safe."

"Good," Korra says, "now just... "

Her voice breaks and she wipes her eyes with her sleeve. Her exhaustion is heavy, weighing down on her, burying her in an old weariness.

"Korra?" Mako says, his palm on her cheek as she avoids his gaze. "Do you want to come with us? You don't have to be here. You can leave if you want."

She shakes her head. His touch burns as though she is all raw skin. All she wants to do is forget him.

"I can't - I can't leave," she mumbles, "I can't leave my dad. He's my only family. I can't just... _leave_ him, where would I go? And he'd try to find me, I know he would. Mako, I can't just - !"

"You should come with us," Bolin says brightly, but Asami shushes him with a downward sweep of her palm and he wilts.

"If you want to stay, I trust you," Asami says. "You know how to take care of yourself."

Korra nods miserably, lips pressed tightly together. She can't just go, it's impossible, and a thousand ideas spiral through her all at once, colliding and circling in each other. Leaving and never coming back, never seeing him again. Leaving and being chased, never stopping, always fleeing. Leaving and being caught and having to come back. It's better to stay and wait, to just respond to him, float on the current of his emotions, allow him to carry her along with his will. She knows how to deal with it.

"I'm staying," she says, and Asami wraps her arms around her.

"Please be safe, Korra," Asami murmurs, and Bolin catches Korra too as Asami lets go.

"You're one-of-a-kind," he says sadly, and Korra smiles, giving Pabu a final scratch on the nose. Pabu chitters at her with questioning eyes and she laughs, patting him on the head.

And now Mako, her Mako, standing with his arms at his sides, his eyes bright with a feeling she knows in her blood and in her heart. He likes her even after everything, or maybe despite it; she doesn't know but she doesn't care. His smile makes her happy. His affection and his patience, his rare flashes of humor and joy, brighter than the fire he makes. Mako just makes her happy.

"You have to know we're not abandoning you," Mako says, and he unwinds his red scarf from around his neck, draping it around hers, hands lingering as he smoothens the folds and arranges it with careful grace.

"This was my dad's scarf," he says, fingering the frayed ends, "I feel... it makes me feel safe. Most of the time."

He drops his gaze, slightly abashed, and Korra takes his hand one more time, staring at their joined fingers, hers brown and sturdy, hardened by years of fighting, his pale and clean and calloused with old burns.

"It was nice kn - "

He stops her words with another kiss and she throws her arms around his neck, reaching up so she can pour herself into him, as much as she can. He has to remember her. Their lips move together and she deepens the kiss. She wants to feel him with her whole being, all of him, as much as she can bear it; being with him has been like being with a star blazing in a bottle.

"We'll see each other again. I think - I think it's meant to happen," he says, with a half-hearted, sheepish laugh, "bye, Korra."

"Bye," Korra says, stroking the scarf. And they leave, Bolin supporting Mako on his shoulders, Asami with her glove sparking on her hand. What a bitter word. What a bitter world.

* * *

Korra lies flat on the floor of the warehouse, staring at the ceiling, too tired to move or go home. Alone again. She welcomes the feeling back, taking it into herself, a wide surgical cut of resignation down her front, splitting her open. Everything exposed and bleeding, lungs slowing and freezing in the wintery air, heart beating off the dust and cold as the loneliness seeps in, oily and black, miring her to her oldest and best friends. Her dreams, colorful, soundless images flapping in her mind like prayer flags on strings, blown on a breeze of recollection.

They're gone. They're gone and that's good and she's happy, so happy they're gone, they won't get hurt anymore... Korra tries to find sadness, with its usual dull ache, or anger with all its spines because she's alone again a_ll alone no one here but the stupid dreams_ _again_ but there's nothing but relief.

She doesn't react when Amon and the Lieutenant find her on the floor. She doesn't say a single word as the Lieutenant pins her arms to her sides and Amon slaps her, hard, the back of his hand like a thunderclap on her face, twice, three times; she doesn't resist as they march her into the prison hallway and throw her into an empty cell, Amon telling her things, awful things, she's worthless to him, absolutely useless. The only word she says is _no_, when he snatches at the scarf, a knife of a word stabbed into his rage. This is hers now.

They leave her to her thoughts, Amon bluntly refusing the Lieutenant's offer of help as his back makes him stumble in pain. She sits on the bed, knees drawn to her chin, rubbing the scarf's worn weave between her fingers.

"Do you regret it?"

Korra lifts her eyes to Aang, his face glowing with an odd light, compassionate and sympathetic. His presence feels like springtime.

"No. I don't care what happens to me," she says. "I just don't want to see them get hurt anymore."

"You seem very detached," Aang says, a nonexistent wind fluttering his orange and yellow robes, the blue tattoo on his forehead colored with the sky. There are clouds moving in his eyes, billowing, white and pure.

"Yeah," she says, with a casual lift of her shoulders. She doesn't care. But his words ring clear, a brass bell tapped with a hammer of memory, and she straightens up, awake on a note of awareness.

"That's what airbending is," Korra says, and Aang smiles at her, a beautiful smile. He places his hand over her heart and a river of stars flows between them, galaxies and comets, a rush of cosmic light that thrills her in a void of grief.

"There's a lot of love in you," he says, and Korra laughs because she can. The laughter comes easily.

"I guess," she says, breathless. "Aang... how come I can't airbend?"

"You can," Aang says. "You just never knew how."

"Oh," Korra says, "duh."

Now Aang laughs, joyful and youthful; his laughter stays as he leaves, vanishing as streaks of light in her dark cell. And _there_ it is: blooming like a lotus in season, each petal unfurling, perfumed and lush with ripeness and love, opening to her at last. She is unbeaten.

* * *

comments and reviews or whatever appreciated

i'm going traveling for six weeks so i'll update in august thnx for the love guys

as usual, pulpofiction tumblr dot com bye now


End file.
